Title:Microendophenotypes of Psychiatric Disorders: Phenotypes of Psychiatric Disorders at the Level of Molecular Dynamics, Synapses, Neurons, and Neural Circuits
VOLUME: 15 ISSUE: 2
Author(s):S. Kida and T. Kato
Affiliation:Department of Bioscience, Faculty of Applied Bioscience, Tokyo University of Agriculture, Tokyo 156-8502, Japan.
Keywords:Animal model, bipolar disorder, depression, endophenotype, microendophenotype, psychiatric disorder,
PTSD, schizophrenia.
Abstract:Psychiatric disorders are caused not only by genetic factors but also by complicated factors such as
environmental ones. Moreover, environmental factors are rarely quantitated as biological and biochemical
indicators, making it extremely difficult to understand the pathological conditions of psychiatric disorders as
well as their underlying pathogenic mechanisms. Additionally, we have actually no other option but to perform
biological studies on postmortem human brains that display features of psychiatric disorders, thereby resulting
in a lack of experimental materials to characterize the basic biology of these disorders. From these
backgrounds, animal, tissue, or cell models that can be used in basic research are indispensable to
understand biologically the pathogenic mechanisms of psychiatric disorders. In this review, we discuss the
importance of microendophenotypes of psychiatric disorders, i.e., phenotypes at the level of molecular
dynamics, neurons, synapses, and neural circuits, as targets of basic research on these disorders.
