After more than 4 decades, most psychiatrists recognize biological psychiatry as a
major component of training, practice, and research in their field. By contrast, most
biologists, at least behavioral biologists, would view some of the basic tenets of
this field as completely alien or antiquated. Nowhere is this gap between biology
and psychiatry more evident than in the concept of “animal models.” This editorial
makes two points. First, it argues that biological psychiatry can learn much from
modern comparative neurobiology, which studies the neural basis of species-typical
behaviors rather than looking for phenocopies of human behavior. Second, it argues
that traditional animal models might be mechanistically misleading, but the use of
model organisms to understand the pathophysiology of mental disorders will be critical
as clinical studies identify genetic alleles and cellular changes that confer risk
for mental disorders.
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© 2007 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
