Berretta Sabina, Heckers Stephan, Benes Francine M
Translational Neuroscience Laboratory, McLean Hospital, 115 Mill St., Belmont, MA 02478, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, 25 Shattuck St., Boston, MA 02115, USA; Program in Neuroscience, Harvard Medical School, 25 Shattuck St., Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Department of Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University, 161 21st Ave. S., #T1217, Nashville, TN, USA.
Schizophr Res. 2015 Sep;167(1-3):91-7. doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2014.10.019. Epub 2014 Nov 11.
In the past 25years, research on the human brain has been providing a clear path toward understanding the pathophysiology of psychiatric illnesses. The successes that have been accrued are matched by significant difficulties identifying and controlling a large number of potential confounding variables. By systematically and effectively accounting for unwanted variance in data from imaging and postmortem human brain studies, meaningful and reliable information regarding the pathophysiology of human brain disorders can be obtained. This perspective paper focuses on postmortem investigations to discuss some of the most challenging sources of variance, including diagnosis, comorbidity, substance abuse and pharmacological treatment, which confound investigations of the human brain.
在过去25年里，对人类大脑的研究为理解精神疾病的病理生理学提供了一条清晰的路径。已取得的成功与识别和控制大量潜在混杂变量的重大困难相匹配。通过系统有效地处理来自成像和人脑尸检研究数据中的不必要差异，可以获得有关人脑疾病病理生理学的有意义且可靠的信息。这篇观点论文聚焦于尸检研究，以讨论一些最具挑战性的差异来源，包括诊断、共病、药物滥用和药物治疗，这些因素会混淆对人类大脑的研究。
