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Psychiatric conditions that include depression, schizophrenia, and dementia contribute most significantly to overall disability adjusted life years (DALYs), surpassing both cardiovascular disease and cancer (1, 2). Therefore, timely and accurate diagnosis and treatment are crucial in psychiatric disorders, for which the development of specific biomarkers would be of particular importance. Despite advances in the field of Psychiatry with more comprehensive classification and description of diagnostic criteria, a pathophysiologically oriented classification of psychiatric disorders based on neurobiological basis remains elusive. The human brain with its complex integrative functions of cognition, emotional regulation, and executive function is the most challenging object of study in human science. Mental illness occurs as a result of these brain dysfunctions, but they often do not lead to distinct pathologic lesions or tissue damage. Instead, they contribute to complications in synaptic relay, synaptic plasticity, and neural circuit function, in addition to influence by external psychosocial factors. Thus, standard imaging methodologies, such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), would not be adequate to delineate the underlying abnormality contributing to the dysfunction. Our inherent lack of understanding of the mind-brain interface and the difficulty in characterizing mental illness further makes the practice of Psychiatry all the more daunting.
Ho et al. (Mon,) studied this question.