Why Darkness Matters

Description: The focus of this book, Why Darkness Matters: The Power of Melanin In The Brain, is to acquaint the public with the reality and importance, both scientific and clinical, of melanin in the human brain and its wider implications for society, families, and science. This is area of study is both emotionally sensitive as well as socially complex. A quick scan of its table of contents gives a clear indication of its place in science today. The importance of variable surface skin melanin is well known along with how this plays itself out in society, culture and even in families around the dynamics of skin color, social positions, and power in society. No one denies this influence rightly or wrongly, in issues of ethnicity, in politics, economics and mass cultural imagery which none of us can escape.

The seminal influence however of inner melanin, especially brain or neuromelanin, has been largely ignored. Yet its profound influence in the development of the human embryo, the organs systems, the nervous system of all the higher mammals and especially the higher human brain functions, is surprisingly under recognized. Skin melanin is significantly different in functioning and importance than inner brain and nervous system neuromelanin. Neuromelanin is much deeper, universal, and far beyond a simple 'racial' issue. The four authors of this book have set out to expand our understanding and bring the powerful and healing reality of universal neuromelanin in the brain into our public lives, taking us beyond superficial surface ethnic differences.