scholarly journals Animal Models in Psychiatric Disorder Studies

Author(s):  
João Victor Nani ◽  
Benjamín Rodríguez ◽  
Fabio Cardoso Cruz ◽  
Mirian Akemi Furuie Hayashi
Author(s):  
Samuel R. Chamberlain

Trichotillomania is a psychiatric disorder characterized by recurrent hair pulling, leading to hair loss and functional impairment. This chapter reviews the phenomenology and epidemiology of trichotillomania, and considers its relationship with putative obsessive-compulsive spectrum conditions and other body-focused repetitive behaviors. Salient animal models of the disorder, along with findings in human patients using neuroimaging and cognitive probes, are summarized. A brain-based model of trichotillomania is formulated, focusing on affect dysregulation, addiction, and impulse dyscontrol. Finally, the chapter flags cardinal questions for the attention of future clinical and research scrutiny.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerburg Keilhoff ◽  
Paolo Fusar-Poli ◽  
Axel Becker

Schizophrenia is a complex psychiatric disorder. Although a number of different hypotheses have been developed to explain its aetiopathogenesis, we are far from understanding it. There is clinical and experimental evidence indicating that neurodevelopmental factors play a major role. Disturbances in neurodevelopment might result in alterations of neuroanatomy and neurochemistry, leading to the typical symptoms observed in schizophrenia. The present paper will critically address the neurodevelopmental models underlying schizophrenia by discussing the effects of typical and atypical antipsychotics in animal models. We will specifically discuss the vitamin D deficiency model, the poly I:C model, the ketamine model, and the postnatal ventral hippocampal lesion model, all of which reflect core neurodevelopmental issues underlying schizophrenia onset.


2005 ◽  
Vol 50 (11) ◽  
pp. 695-702 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanina Shulman ◽  
Philip G Tibbo

Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder with a complicated pathophysiology, involving many biochemical abnormalities in the brain. Because neuroactive steroids (NASs) modulate neurotransmitter systems that are implicated in the pathology of schizophrenia, recent research has focused on examining the role that NASs play in the illness. Although research in this area is relatively new, it appears that NASs may potentially be implicated in the pathophysiology of the illness. This paper reviews the current understanding of NASs, the research literature on NASs in schizophrenia and in animal models of the illness (including the effects of antipsychotic medication on NASs) and on the potential antipsychotic role of NASs themselves and, finally, discusses future directions for this area of schizophrenia research.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jie Zhang ◽  
Stephanie C. Dulawa

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a severe eating disorder that primarily affects young women and girls, and is characterized by abnormal restrictive feeding and a dangerously low body-mass index. AN has one of the highest mortality rates of any psychiatric disorder, and no approved pharmacological treatments exist. Current psychological and behavioral treatments are largely ineffective, and relapse is common. Relatively little basic research has examined biological mechanisms that underlie AN compared to other major neuropsychiatric disorders. A recent large-scale genome-wide association study (GWAS) revealed that the genetic architecture of AN has strong metabolic as well as psychiatric origins, suggesting that AN should be reconceptualized as a metabo-psychiatric disorder. Therefore, identifying the metabo-psychiatric mechanisms that contribute to AN may be essential for developing effective treatments. This review focuses on animal models for studying the metabo-psychiatric mechanisms that may contribute to AN, with a focus on the activity-based anorexia (ABA) paradigm. We also highlight recent work using modern circuit-dissecting neuroscience techniques to uncover metabolic mechanisms that regulate ABA, and encourage further work to ultimately identify novel treatment strategies for AN.


Author(s):  
Summer L. Thompson ◽  
Stephanie C. Dulawa

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a severe psychiatric disorder characterized by obsessions and/or compulsions. Only half of patients respond to first-line pharmacological treatments, and symptom relief is typically partial, even in responders. Gaining a better understanding of OCD etiology could lead to better treatments, and potentially to prevention. Animal models are a useful tool for studying neurobiological mechanisms underlying psychiatric phenotypes. Effective use of animal models requires identification of reliable, quantifiable features of the disorder of interest that can be measured across species. The modeled phenotypes then require assessment for predictive validity: the accuracy with which a model makes accurate predictions about the human condition. Once a model has been shown to make accurate predictions, using it to study neurobiological mechanisms is justified. The validity of spontaneous and induced rodent models of OCD is reviewed in this chapter.


Author(s):  
Veena Rani I. ◽  
Kiranmai G. ◽  
Ravi Pratap Pulla

Objective: Anxiety is a widespread psychiatric disorder affecting around 5% of the population. Furthermore, it is difficult to predict patient’s response to any given treatment. In the traditional systems of medicine, many plants have been used to treat anxiety and depression for thousands of years. Desmostachyabipinnata belongs to the family Poaceae, have pharmacological actions like dysentery and menorrhagia, and as a diuretic. The present study was designed to evaluate the antianxiety activity of the alcoholic and aqueous extracts of Desmostachyabipinnata leaves in rodents.Methods: Antianxiety activity was screened by different methods like elevated plus maze model and actophotometer.Results: The results infer that reduced aversion fear elicits anti-anxiety activity.Conclusion: It was concluded that alcoholic and aqueous extracts of Desmostachyabipinnata leaves are having anti-anxiety activity among which alcoholic extract of Desmostachyabipinnata leaves showing more significant activity over the aqueous extract. 


2004 ◽  
Vol 97 (1) ◽  
pp. 347-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dina Lipkind ◽  
Anat Sakov ◽  
Neri Kafkafi ◽  
Gregory I. Elmer ◽  
Yoav Benjamini ◽  
...  

Anxiety is a widely studied psychiatric disorder and is thought to be a complex and multidimensional phenomenon. Sensitive behavioral discrimination of animal models of anxiety is crucial for the elucidation of the behavioral components of anxiety and the physiological processes that mediate them. Commonly used behavior paradigms of anxiety usually include only a few automatically collected measures; these do not exhaust the behavioral richness exhibited by animals, thus perhaps missing important differences between preparations. The aim of the present study was to expand the repertoire of automatically collected measures in a classical test of anxiety: behavior in relation to the wall in the open field. We present an algorithm, based on the Software for the Exploration of Exploration strategy, which automatically partitions the mouse path into intrinsically defined patterns of movement near the wall and in the center. These patterns are used to design new end points, which provide an articulated description of various aspects of behavior near the wall and in the center. Sixteen new end points were designed with data from C57BL/6J and DBA/2J mice tested in three laboratories. The strain differences in all end points were evaluated on another data set to assess their validity and were found to remain stable. Ten of the sixteen end points were found to discriminate between the two strains in a replicable manner. The entire set of end points can be used on various genetic and pharmacological models of anxiety with good prospects of providing fine discrimination in a replicable manner.


2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 1021-1031 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordy van Enkhuizen ◽  
Mark A. Geyer ◽  
Klaas Kooistra ◽  
Jared W. Young

Abstract Bipolar disorder (BD) mania is a psychiatric disorder with multifaceted symptoms. Development of targeted treatments for BD mania may benefit from animal models that mimic multiple symptoms, as opposed to hyperactivity alone. Using the reverse-translated multivariate exploratory paradigm, the behavioural pattern monitor (BPM), we reported that patients with BD mania exhibit hyperactivity as well as increased specific exploration and more linear movements through space. This abnormal profile is also observed in mice with reduced function of the dopamine transporter (DAT) through either constitutive genetic [knockdown (KD)] or acute pharmacological (GBR12909) means. Here, we assessed the pharmacological predictive validity of these models by administering the BD-treatment valproic acid (VPA) for 28 d. After 1.5% VPA- or regular-chow treatment for 28 d, C57BL/6J mice received GBR12909 (9 mg/kg) or saline and were tested in the BPM. Similarly, DAT KD and wild type (WT) littermates were treated with VPA-chow and tested in the BPM. GBR12909-treated and DAT KD mice on regular chow were hyperactive, exhibited increased specific exploration and moved in straighter patterns compared to saline-treated and WT mice respectively. Chronic 1.5% VPA-chow treatment resulted in therapeutic concentrations of VPA and ameliorated hyperactivity in both models, while specific exploration and behavioural organization remained unaffected. Hence, the mania-like profile of mice with reduced functional DAT was partially attenuated by chronic VPA treatment, consistent with the incomplete symptomatic effect of VPA treatment in BD patients. Both DAT models may help to identify therapeutics that impact the full spectrum of BD mania.


2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole M. Baran

AbstractReductionist thinking in neuroscience is manifest in the widespread use of animal models of neuropsychiatric disorders. Broader investigations of diverse behaviors in non-model organisms and longer-term study of the mechanisms of plasticity will yield fundamental insights into the neurobiological, developmental, genetic, and environmental factors contributing to the “massively multifactorial system networks” which go awry in mental disorders.


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