Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

The best of times, the worst of times for psychiatric disease

Nature Neuroscience volume 15, pages 811–812 (2012)Cite this article

Subjects

As long-awaited advances in psychiatric genetics begin to materialize in force, promising to steer us safely to the best of times in psychiatric disease research, many pharmaceutical companies pull away from the challenge of drug development, threatening to bring us to the worst of times for the field. There is a real danger of missed opportunities and a sense of urgency for defining a clear path forward.

At a US National Institutes of Health–funded meeting in late May 2011, titled “Genetic and Neural Complexity in Psychiatry,” a group of geneticists and neuroscientists considered how best to proceed in building translational bridges between human genetics, animal models and neural circuits. While acknowledging the many complex issues, the group agreed on a number of recommendations: research effort and funding should be directed toward identification of rare, highly penetrant mutations and the generation of a few (possibly a dozen) animal and cellular models anchored in unequivocal highly penetrant mutations, with the goal of using existing and newly emerging powerful neuroscience techniques to identify convergent synaptic processes or circuits. Here we briefly summarize our rationale for these proposals and outline our recommendations for research in this area.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Acknowledgements

Support from the US National Institutes of Health (grant 5R13MH091947 to M.K.) and the Martinos family is gratefully acknowledged.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York, USA

    Maria Karayiorgou

  2. The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at Oxford University, Oxford, UK

    Jonathan Flint

  3. Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, and Department of Neuroscience at Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York, USA

    Joseph A Gogos

  4. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Robert C Malenka

  5. Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Rockefeller University, New York, New York, USA

    Cornelia I Bargmann

  6. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Department of Biological Engineering, MIT Media Lab, McGovern Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    Edward S Boyden

  7. Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Edward T Bullmore

  8. GlaxoSmithKline Clinical Unit Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Edward T Bullmore

  9. Yerkes National Primates Research Center and Department of Human Genetics, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Anthony W Chan

  10. Emeritus Professor, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Michael Davis

  11. Department of Bioengineering, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Karl Deisseroth

  12. Department of Neurobiology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Ricardo E Dolmetch

  13. Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle, Washington, USA

    Ricardo E Dolmetch

  14. Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    Kevin Eggan

  15. Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Scott C Fears & Nelson B Freimer

  16. Department of Neurology, Neurogenetics Program, Center for Autism Research and Treatment, Semel Institute, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Daniel H Geschwind

  17. Department of Psychiatry, New York State Psychiatric Institute, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York, USA

    Joshua Gordon

  18. Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington, USA

    Debbie A Nickerson

  19. Institute of Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Brussels Medical School, Brussels, Belgium

    Pierre Vanderhaeghen

  20. Department of Neuroscience, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York, USA

    Richard Axel & Charles S Zuker

  21. Simons Foundation, Autism Research Initiative, New York, New York, USA

    Gerald D Fischbach

Authors
  1. Maria Karayiorgou
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jonathan Flint
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Joseph A Gogos
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Robert C Malenka
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Consortia

the Genetic and Neural Complexity in Psychiatry 2011 Working Group

  • Cornelia I Bargmann
  • , Edward S Boyden
  • , Edward T Bullmore
  • , Anthony W Chan
  • , Michael Davis
  • , Karl Deisseroth
  • , Ricardo E Dolmetch
  • , Kevin Eggan
  • , Scott C Fears
  • , Nelson B Freimer
  • , Daniel H Geschwind
  • , Joshua Gordon
  • , Debbie A Nickerson
  • , Pierre Vanderhaeghen
  • , Richard Axel
  • , Charles S Zuker
  •  & Gerald D Fischbach

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maria Karayiorgou.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

Edward Bullmore is employed half-time by University of Cambridge and half-time by GlaxoSmithKline and is a stockholder in GlaxoSmithKline.

Additional information

A complete list of authors and affiliations appears at the end of this paper.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Karayiorgou, M., Flint, J., Gogos, J. et al. The best of times, the worst of times for psychiatric disease. Nat Neurosci 15, 811–812 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3115

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3115

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing: Translational Research

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Translational Research newsletter — top stories in biotechnology, drug discovery and pharma.

Get what matters in translational research, free to your inbox weekly. Sign up for Nature Briefing: Translational Research