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Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatr. Mar 22, 2016; 6(1): 18-30
Published online Mar 22, 2016. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v6.i1.18
Neuronal networks in mental diseases and neuropathic pain: Beyond brain derived neurotrophic factor and collapsin response mediator proteins
Tam T Quach, Jessica K Lerch, Jerome Honnorat, Rajesh Khanna, Anne-Marie Duchemin
Tam T Quach, Jessica K Lerch, Department of Neuroscience, Center for Brain and Spinal Cord Repair, the Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, United States
Tam T Quach, Jerome Honnorat, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, INSERM U1028/CNRS UMR 5292, F-69372 Lyon, France
Jerome Honnorat, French Reference Center on Paraneoplastic Neurological Syndrome, Hospices Civils de Lyon, Hôpital Neurologique, Neurologie B, F-69677 Bron, France
Jerome Honnorat, Université de Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, F-69372 Lyon, France
Rajesh Khanna, Department of Pharmacology, College of Medicine, the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85724, United States
Anne-Marie Duchemin, Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, the Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, United States
Author contributions: Quach TT wrote the draft of the manuscript; all authors contributed sections of the manuscript, and edited, revised and approved the final version.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No potential conflict of interest. No financial support.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution non-commercial license (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial.
Correspondence to: Tam T Quach, PhD, Department of Neuroscience, Center for Brain and Spinal Cord Repair, the Ohio State University, 460 12th Avenue, Room 696, Columbus, OH 43210, United States. quach.1@osu.edu
Telephone: +1-614-2921887 Fax: +1-614-2937599
Received: August 28, 2015
Peer-review started: September 1, 2015
First decision: November 6, 2015
Revised: November 24, 2015
Accepted: January 5, 2016
Article in press: January 7, 2016
Published online: March 22, 2016
Processing time: 201 Days and 7.4 Hours
Abstract

The brain is a complex network system that has the capacity to support emotion, thought, action, learning and memory, and is characterized by constant activity, constant structural remodeling, and constant attempt to compensate for this remodeling. The basic insight that emerges from complex network organization is that substantively different networks can share common key organizational principles. Moreover, the interdependence of network organization and behavior has been successfully demonstrated for several specific tasks. From this viewpoint, increasing experimental/clinical observations suggest that mental disorders are neural network disorders. On one hand, single psychiatric disorders arise from multiple, multifactorial molecular and cellular structural/functional alterations spreading throughout local/global circuits leading to multifaceted and heterogeneous clinical symptoms. On the other hand, various mental diseases may share functional deficits across the same neural circuit as reflected in the overlap of symptoms throughout clinical diagnoses. An integrated framework including experimental measures and clinical observations will be necessary to formulate a coherent and comprehensive understanding of how neural connectivity mediates and constraints the phenotypic expression of psychiatric disorders.

Keywords: Neuron; Network; Synapse; Schizophrenia; Bipolar; Depression; Stress; Pain; Collapsin response mediator proteins

Core tip: Increasing evidences suggest that mental diseases are neural network disorders. Neurites and synapses represent the sub-cellular elements organizing these networks, and the molecules that regulate their formation, retraction and adaptive remodeling may contribute to the pathology of mental disorders. Various syndromes may share alterations of functional network leading to symptoms overlapping through clinical diagnoses.