Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurobiology, Universityof Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, Birmingham, Alabama 35294, USA.
Biol Psychiatry. 2011 Jan 15;69(2):127-33. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2010.09.035. Epub 2010 Nov 20.
Biological psychiatry has made significant advances through the development of postmortem studies, animal models, and studies with living humans. Although these approaches each have advantages and disadvantages, the postmortem field is undergoing a significant shift toward more complex and informative methodologies. In the first part of this review, we summarize the long-standing methodologic challenges facing this field. In the second part of the article, we discuss the innovative approaches being used for postmortem studies, including laser capture microdissection and subcellular fractionization. These techniques will permit scientists working in the postmortem field to ask and answer the largest possible questions, providing new targets for drug discovery and improved treatments for severe mental illness.
生物精神病学通过开展尸检研究、动物模型和对活体人类的研究取得了重大进展。尽管这些方法各有优缺点，但尸检领域正在朝着更加复杂和信息丰富的方法转变。在这篇综述的第一部分，我们总结了该领域长期面临的方法学挑战。在文章的第二部分，我们讨论了用于尸检研究的创新方法，包括激光捕获显微解剖和亚细胞分馏。这些技术将使从事尸检研究的科学家能够提出和回答尽可能大的问题，为药物发现提供新的靶点，并改善严重精神疾病的治疗方法。
