As often in medicine animals are ( SADLY) used in experiments .A new study of mice shows there are important links between human and mouse minds in how they function -- and malfunction. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis devised a rigorous approach to study how hallucinations are produced in the brain, providing a promising entry point to the development of much-needed new therapies for schizophrenia.
The study that was published in the journal Science, lays out a way to probe the biological roots of a defining symptom of psychosis: hallucinations. The researchers trained people and mice to complete a computer-based task that induced them to hear imaginary sounds. By analyzing performance of the task, the researchers were able to objectively measure hallucination-like events in people and mice.
This approach allowed them to study the neural circuits underlying hallucinations, potentially fully opening up the study of mental illness to the kind of scientific studies that have been fruitful for diseases of other parts of the body. My concern is that despite the positives and even if there are similarities, can a study like this be of great value when it comes to humans who has a fundamentally different cognitive ability and brain structure? I agree that we can see tendencies and the study gives an insight, however can this ever fully be transferred to humans? also see other risks as well as grave ethical concerns that applies with all experiments on animals. What are your thoughts?
Best wishes
Henrik
The comparative study of living organisms is standard laboratory practice, e.g. the knowledge transfer of animal experiments to humans. Concerning psychiatry, this may be the human medicine par excellence, and I personally (and methodically) doubt that, in this case, the results of veterinary medicine can be applied to humans successfully.
Can we use mice to study schizophrenia?
www.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29352031/
The validity of rodent models for the study of psychiatric disorders is controversial. Despite great efforts from academic institutions and pharmaceutical companies, as of today, no major therapeutic intervention has been developed for the treatment of psychiatric disorders based on mechanistic insights from rodent models. Here, we argue that despite these historical shortcomings, rodent studies are nevertheless instrumental for identifying neuronal circuit mechanisms underlying behaviours that are affected in psychiatric disorders. Focusing on schizophrenia, we will give four examples of rodent models that were generated based on genetic and environmental risk factors or pathophysiological evidence as entry points. We will then discuss how circuit analysis in these specific examples can be used for testing hypotheses about neuronal mechanisms underlying symptoms of schizophrenia, which will then guide the development of new therapies.This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Of mice and mental health: facilitating dialogue between basic and clinical neuroscientists'.
Study: Mice behavior studies can apply to human behavior
www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2010/01/mice-behavior-studies-can-apply-human-behavior
Studying animals in behavioral experiments has been a cornerstone of psychological research, but whether the observations are relevant for human behavior has been unclear. Now, Weill Cornell Medical College (WCMC) researchers have identified an alteration to the DNA of a gene that imparts similar anxiety-related behavior in both humans and mice, demonstrating that laboratory animals can be accurately used to study these human behaviors.
The research, published in the Jan. 14 issue of the journal Science, found that people with a certain altered gene have a harder time recovering from a highly stressful experience. The finding may help researchers develop new clinical strategies to treat humans with such anxiety disorders as phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
"We found that humans and mice who had the same human genetic alteration also had greater difficulty in extinguishing an anxious-like response to adverse stimuli," said B.J. Casey, co-senior author of the study and professor of psychology in psychiatry at the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology at WCMC.
The researchers observed common behavioral responses between humans and mice that possess an alteration in the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene. The mice were genetically altered -- meaning that they had a human genetic variation inserted into their genome.
To make their comparison, the researchers paired a harmless stimulus with an aversive one to elicit an anxious-like response, known as conditioned fear. However, after the fear learning, when people are exposed numerous times to the harmless stimulus (without the aversive stimulus), they usually eventually stop responding anxiously.
"But both the mice and humans found to have the alternation in the BDNF gene took significantly longer to 'get over' the innocuous stimuli and stop having a conditioned fear response," said Fatima Soliman, lead author of the study, who is currently a Tri-Institutional M.D.-Ph.D. student who has completed her Ph.D.
In addition to observational testing, the researchers also performed brain scans on the human participants to see if brain function differed between people with the normal and abnormal BDNF gene.
They found that a circuit in the brain involving the frontal cortex and amygdala -- responsible for learning about cues that signal safety and danger -- was altered in people with the abnormality, compared with participants who did not have the abnormality.
"Testing for this gene may one day help doctors make more informed decisions for treatment of anxiety disorders," explains Dr. Francis S. Lee, co-senior author of the study and associate professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at WCMC.
Therapists use exposure therapy -- a type of behavior therapy in which the patient confronts a feared situation, object, thought or memory -- to treat people who experience stress and anxiety in certain situations. Sometimes, exposure therapy involves reliving a traumatic experience in a controlled, therapeutic environment. The goal is to reduce the distress, physical or emotional, felt in situations that trigger negative emotion. Exposure therapy is often used for the treatment of anxiety, phobias and PTSD.
"Exposure therapy may still work for patients with this gene abnormality, but a positive test for the BDNF genetic variant may let doctors know that exposure therapy may take longer, and that the use of newer drugs may be necessary to accelerate extinction learning," explains Soliman.
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Henrik, I have several papers on here dealing with this problem and extrapolating thereby serious doubt must be passed onto psychiatry. There has been a tendency to accept the validity and conclusions of these methods, but positive results are determined by psychiatry. It provides a view of human beings with reference to rats and mice and ignoring of higher human functions as participatory. The brain, which is the organ concerned, has expression obviously far, far higher than chimpanzee brains, not just rodent brains, and to pretend this fact does not exist based on an implausible model based entirely on lab research puts people at risk.
The treatments that result are again assessed entirely by psychiatry and independent research, which does not happen often, never confirms the results. Your example here seems to assume that hallucinations are the same for mice and human beings rather than having likely different properties.
Stanley Wilkin I fully agree with you about the properties. It also raises a lot of questions about the limitations of the study it self. I have a Boa Constrictor for example that has cancer. Pain relief is a very difficult issue when it comes to reptiles due to their different physiology. I fear we are facing a similar issue here. Can we apply knowledge gained in animal studies on humans? I have my doubts and I also share the same concerns as expressed by Stephen I. Ternyik . I think all or at least most studies have their weaknesses but the idea that mice = human gives me a slight headache.
Henrik, mice and rats are not magical animals but all mammals would serve in the same way. Rats and mice have many offspring so provide a huge resource for lab work, and as few people care about them, once they are used their necks are broken and they are thrown in the bin. Imagine, if monkeys were used in the same way. A public outcry! Henrik, if researchers approach gov. bodies with a research project, they are more likely to receive money if experiments on rats and mice are included.
Teaching psychology I tell students you cannot prove anything through animal experiments alone. Psychiatry does! I teach them you cannot prove anything by lab experiments alone. Psychiatry does!
My paper Hu-mice and Hu-men.
My project An Unusual Power. These matters are debated and responses of patients to drug treatments. Very, very different to psychiatry's claims.
Check out Joanna Moncrieff, Imperial College, London. We've shared information occasionally.
Check out my Fabrication and Funding. Psychiatry's false claims for the efficacy of treatments.
Lastly, check out psychiatry's involvement in the holocaust.
The backup given to these claims, evidenced by other contributions here, is whistling in the dark given the years medical researchers have been trying to make an assured connection. It is for their benefit to find one. I suggest that the experimental approach so far may be expressed thus:
Put a rat and a human being side by side. Plunge a knife into the rat's brain and it dies.
Plunge a knife into a human being's brain and they die.
Therefore rats and human brains are similar.
There is a difference in what psychiatry claims drugs do and their actual effects as understood by patients. See my An Unusual Power project. This I suggest is the result of basing claims on illnesses and the effects of drugs on laboratory research employing rats and mice. The results correspond to the effects on the latter, not human beings and because of the marked differences in brain expressions, the effects are unpredictable in human beings. I suggest also that results anyway are falsified to meet the expectations of lab claims.
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