Experimental Models of Schizophrenia

ABSTRACT

Animal models can provide a useful tool for the study of some aspects of psychiatric disorders and their treatment. The four criteria for the evaluation of animal models of psychiatric disorders are as following 1) similarity of inducing conditions 2) similarity of behavioral state 3) common underlying neurobiological mechanisms 4) reversal by clinically effective treatment techniques. Several animal models have been proposed for schizophrenia phenylethylamine model, L-dopa model, hallucinogen model. cocaine model, amphetamine model, phencyclidine model, noradrenergic reward system lesion model, reticular stimulation model, social isolation model, conditioned avoidance reaction, catalepsy test, paw test, self-stimulation paradigms, latent inhibition paradigms, blocking paradigms, prepulse inhibition of the startle reflex, rodent interaction, social behavior in monkeys, hippocampal damage, high ambient pressure, and models using selective breeding. Among them, animals with bilateral lesion of the hippocampus may provide an adequate animal model for several symptoms of schizophrenia, and ketamine model can reproduce negative symptoms and cognitive deficits as well as positive symptoms of schizophrenia. In conclusion, no model of schizophrenia is entirely representative of the disease, and findings gleaned from model systems must be cautiously interpreted. Furthermore, the process of developing and validating animal models must work in concert with the process to identify reliable measures of human phenomenology.