Moving past animal experiments to understand human neurological disease

Moving past animal experiments to understand human neurological disease Richard J. Miller, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Pharmacology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, says that the belief monkeys and other animals are essential for performing translationally useful research for human neurological disease is outdated and incompatible with 21st-century science. Using animals to model human neurological disease is severely limited. This is particularly true when it comes to diseases of the nervous system. Numerous fundamental differences exist between the brains of monkeys and humans. (1,2) These include the relative proportions of neuronal types, their laminar distribution, gene expression profiles, and morphology. These disparities are critical when trying to answer questions about the causes of diseases that are exclusively human.