I see no reason, however, to assume that anxiety is a unitary construct in mice, but manifold in humans. Although perhaps slightly less severe, the same problematic definition of phenotypes complicates the field of psychiatric genetics. Linkage and GWAS studies are done based on DSM criteria, but these evolve over time as our understanding of disorders improves. However, because of our lack of knowledge about underlying neurobiological mechanisms, psychiatric disorders are defined based on symptoms only and this may lead to an incorrect taxonomy. It is therefore all but certain that some ‘disorders’ listed selleck kinase inhibitor in the DSM are not a single

disorder, but a collection of several different afflictions with similar symptomatology. It is easy to see that this would enormously complicate the task of identifying genomic risk loci involved in such a heterogeneous ‘disorder’. Conversely, some mental disorders (such as schizophrenia spectrum and

autism spectrum disorders [63]) www.selleckchem.com/products/BIBF1120.html present overlapping features, indicating the possibility that a subtype of these disorders exists that presents a mix of symptoms from both. It would appear therefore that both animal and human behavior genetics are facing similar problems, namely the urgent need for a more in-depth analysis of behavior in order to more precisely delineate behavioral constructs, be they in the range of normal or pathological variation. From the above it becomes apparent that the sophistication of our genetic methodologies and tools is not

matched by a similar understanding of the behavior of our subjects. It should be obvious that many tuclazepam failures to replicate behavioral results or gene localizations can be traced back to the problems outlined above. For example, if two research groups report conflicting results for the effect of a certain KO mutation on, say, depressive behavior, this is not necessarily because of a lack of reproducibility of the behavior but may be due to the fact that the two groups were, in fact, measuring different things by using seemingly similar but in reality very different tests tapping into different underlying behavioral processes. Similarly, genomic risk loci identified for a particular psychiatric disorder in one population often do not replicate in another one. This may, of course, be due to statistical problems or inadequate sample sizes, but there is also the distinct possibility that the two populations differ in the frequency with which different subtypes of the disorder occur, so that different loci will be more or less causative in the different populations. It should perhaps be noted here that these problems are not specific for behavioral genetics, but also relevant for psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience sensu lato.