Jul 30th 2014, 00:00, by A.J. Robison
Although the past decades have seen an explosion in research into psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders, and a concomitant increase in our understanding of their fundamental molecular mechanisms in discrete brain regions, a holistic, organ-wide model for most such conditions is still lacking. Because most disorders of the mind are multifaceted, involving myriad symptoms that arise from molecular maladaptations in multiple brain regions and the circuits they form [1], the lack of a whole-brain molecular model is a key roadblock in the development of novel therapeutics that treat all the symptoms of a given disease.
