During the past two decades, the number of animal models of psychiatric disorders has grown exponentially. Of these, genetic animal models that are modeled after rare but highly penetrant mutations hold great promise for deciphering critical molecular, synaptic, and neurocircuitry deficits of major psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia. Animal models should aim to focus on core aspects rather than capture the entire human disease. In this context, animal models with strong etiological validity, where behavioral and neurophysiological phenotypes and the features of the disease being modeled are in unambiguous homology, are being used to dissect both elementary and complex cognitive and perceptual processing deficits present in psychiatric disorders at the level of neurocircuitry, shedding new light on critical disease mechanisms. Recent progress in neuroscience along with large-scale initiatives that propose a consistent approach in characterizing these deficits across different laboratories will further enhance the efficacy of these studies that will ultimately lead to identifying new biological targets for drug development.

中文翻译：

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精神分裂症的遗传小鼠模型中的神经认知和知觉加工：新兴的教训。

在过去的二十年中，精神疾病的动物模型数量呈指数增长。在这些动物中，以罕见但高度渗透性的突变为模型的遗传动物模型，有望为重大精神疾病（例如精神分裂症）的关键分子，突触和神经回路功能障碍的破译提供依据。动物模型的目标应集中在核心方面，而不是捕获整个人类疾病。在这种情况下，具有强烈病因学有效性的动物模型被用于剖析精神疾病中存在的基本和复杂的认知和知觉加工缺陷，其中行为和神经生理学表型以及所模拟疾病的特征具有明确的同源性。神经回路的研究，为重要的疾病机制提供了新的思路。