From synapse to system: mechanistic pathways of neural signaling dysfunction in psychiatric disorders - PubMed
3 days ago
- #neural signaling
- #neuroscience
- #psychiatry
- Psychiatric disorders are network-level brain diseases caused by disruptions in neural signaling across molecular, synaptic, circuit, and systems levels.
- Dysregulation in receptors, intracellular pathways, and ion channels leads to network dysconnectivity, causing cognitive, emotional, and behavioral deficits.
- Advancements in genomics, transcriptomics, connectomics, and computational modeling help understand signaling abnormalities in psychiatric disorders.
- Key processes include synaptic plasticity, receptor-mediated communication, intracellular signaling cascades, and neuroimmune interactions.
- Neuroimaging and graph-theoretic studies show excitation-inhibition imbalance, atypical synaptic pruning, and impaired oscillatory synchrony in disorders like schizophrenia, depression, and autism.
- Genetic and epigenetic variations in genes like CACNA1C, GRIN2B, and DISC1 contribute to network vulnerability and clinical heterogeneity.
- AI and multimodal integration help identify individualized 'signaling fingerprints' linking molecular perturbations to systems-level dysfunction.
- This research supports precision psychiatry and targeted interventions using neuromodulation, molecular mechanisms, and biomarkers.