Not sure what to think of this. On the one hand, any move toward a neuropsychology framework for psychiatry is probably a good thing. On the other, apparently the only point of the move is to make it easier to categorize drug research....
The issue came to a head one year ago this month, with the latest edition ofpsychiatry's "bible", the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The US National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) said the DSM-5had so many problems we effectively need to tear it up and start again. The way forward, it said, is a new research programme to discover the brain problems that underlie mental illnesses.
That research is now taking off. The first milestone came earlier this year, when the NIMH published a list of 23 core brain functions and their associated neural circuitry, neurotransmitters and genes – and the behaviours and emotions that go with them (see "The mind's 23 building blocks"). Within weeks, the first drug trials conceived and funded through this new programme will begin.
While just a first draft, the list arguably represents the future of neuroscience-based mental healthcare. "This is the Rosetta stone for characterising human mental function," says Andrew Krystal at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.