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Modeling psychiatric disorders at the cellular and network levels

Molecular Psychiatry volume 17, pages 1239–1253 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

Although psychiatric disorders such as autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder affect a number of brain regions and produce a complex array of clinical symptoms, basic phenotypes likely exist at the level of single neurons and simple networks. Being highly heritable, it is hypothesized that these disorders are amenable to cell-based studies in vitro. Using induced pluripotent stem cell-derived neurons and/or induced neurons from fibroblasts, limitless numbers of live human neurons can now be generated from patients with a genetic background permissive to the disease state. We predict that cell-based studies will ultimately contribute to our understanding of the initiation, progression and treatment of these psychiatric disorders.

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Acknowledgements

The Gage Laboratory is partially funded by CIRM Grant RL1-00649-1, The Lookout and Mathers Foundation, the Helmsley Foundation as well as Sanofi-Aventis. We thank J Simon for illustrations and ML Gage for editorial comments.

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  1. Laboratory of Genetics, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA, USA

    K J Brennand, A Simone, N Tran & F H Gage

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  1. K J Brennand
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Brennand, K., Simone, A., Tran, N. et al. Modeling psychiatric disorders at the cellular and network levels. Mol Psychiatry 17, 1239–1253 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/mp.2012.20

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