Future Directions

Schizophrenia and related psychoses constitute a disorder of abnormal brain development resulting from complex interactions between genetic and environmental factors. Over the past decade, animal models have been instrumental in evaluating new pharmacological treatments and illuminating the underlying pathobiology of behavioral abnormalities thought to mimic psychotic illness. Recent insights, from genetics through to psychopathology, are changing our perception of major mental illnesses from distinct clinical categories to combinations of/intersections between numerous dimensions of abnormality. This fundamental conceptual shift is in turn engendering the development of new animal models and more clinically relevant approaches to their evaluation, with a strong emphasis on translational potential to uncover molecular, developmental and brain network mechanisms that underlay these dimensions of psychotic disorder.