Neuropsychiatric Disorders: Genetics and Targeted Therapy
A special issue of Genes (ISSN 2073-4425). This special issue belongs to the section "Human Genomics and Genetic Diseases".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 August 2025 | Viewed by 1062
Special Issue Editors
2. Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA
Interests: synaptic plasticity; synaptic physiology; cognition; antidepressants; depression
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Neuropsychiatric disorders are a set of highly debilitating medical conditions that are etiologically complex and difficult to treat. Half of the global population will suffer from a neuropsychiatric condition at some point in their lifetime, making novel therapeutic development an exigent clinical priority. However, rational therapeutic design critically depends on scientific discoveries that provide actionable biological insights into the pathophysiology of disease. This requires an improved understanding of how gene × environment interactions confer neural circuit dysfunction, which is a unifying characteristic that all neuropsychiatric conditions share. Currently, additional evidence is needed to establish the following: (1) the functional impact of disease-related gene mutations on the proteins they encode; (2) how this contributes mechanistically to aberrant changes in the efficacy of synaptic transmission and plasticity; (3) whether this promotes clinically significant deviations in cognition, perception, emotion, and behavior; and (4) the role of environmental factors in potentiating (or mitigating) disease risk.
Our goal is to publish a multidisciplinary set of studies that reveal physiological processes through which genetic and/or environmental factors confer increased risk for neuropsychiatric conditions. This may include patient-derived genetic variants or site-specific mutations that are designed to test specific mechanistic hypotheses of cellular function. We also welcome submissions from subject areas including, but not limited to, the following: molecular mechanisms of synapse development and circuit assembly; transcriptional and epigenetic signatures of disease risk and/or therapeutic response; cell-type-specific neural circuit function in mood-related behavior; convergent pathways underlying neuropsychiatric comorbidities; notable preclinical model developments that broadly facilitate the study of neuropsychiatric phenotypes.
Contributions in the form of research articles, reviews, and commentaries are welcome.
Dr. Lace Riggs
Guest Editor
Dr. Xin Fu
Assistant Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- neuropsychiatric disorders
- polygenetic interactions
- genotype–phenotype correlations
- neural circuits
- synaptic transmission
- synaptic plasticity
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