Challenges in understanding psychiatric disorders and developing therapeutics: a role for zebrafish.

ABSTRACT: The treatment of psychiatric disorders presents three major challenges to the research and clinical community: defining a genotype associated with a disorder, characterizing the molecular pathology of each disorder and developing new therapies. This Review addresses how cellular and animal systems can help to meet these challenges, with an emphasis on the role of the zebrafish. Genetic changes account for a large proportion of psychiatric disorders and, as gene variants that predispose to psychiatric disease are beginning to be identified in patients, these are tractable for study in cellular and animal systems. Defining cellular and molecular criteria associated with each disorder will help to uncover causal physiological changes in patients and will lead to more objective diagnostic crit

SUBMITTER: McCammon JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4486859 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature