Research on Child and Adolescent Mental Health

play a role, but the actual mechanisms of stress
sensitization remain to be explored.
CROSSING THE BOUNDARIES
Future neuroscience research is focusing on the
etiologic role of genes and key environmental
factors to understand how genes and the
environment interact to produce illness, and to
clarify how these risk factors differentially affect
gender, stage of development, and cultural/ethnic
groups. Insight will be gained into the role of
genetic and environmental factors in the etiology
of comorbidity. In addition, the development of
multivariate genetic models, which include
specified environmental risk factors, will provide
realistic etiologic models that incorporate all
major risk-factor domains. To do this, models of
pathogenesis are needed that can be refined and
tested both in the laboratory and in the
community.
NIMH has already begun to support some efforts
to facilitate the translation of basic science
knowledge. Several innovative networks have
been brought together through a translational
research initiative. One such network is
investigating the links between glucocorticoid and
early experiences in rodents and its potential for
helping to explicate disorders related to early
adverse conditions in humans. The network
comprises animal researchers, developmental
psychologists, psychiatrists, and mental health
services researchers who have met over the past 2
years to examine the relation between stress and
the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA).
After a thorough discussion of ideas, the group
identified potential linkages and is now
developing feasible research studies that take
advantage of the advances at the interface of
basic animal models, neuroscience, and services
research to begin to clarify how behavioral and
biological factors may interact in the etiology,
course, and amelioration of psychopathology.
OBSTACLES AND GAPS
Broadly speaking, there are four reasons why
progress in this area is slow. First, there is still
relatively little innovative interaction between
clinical research and basic neuroscience research
focused on animal models. For example, a review
of the NIMH research portfolio shows many
studies dealing with the genetics, physiological
correlates, environmental determinants, and
occasionally gender differences of psychological
disorders such as depression, borderline
personality disorder, anxiety disorder, tic
disorders, schizophrenia, and autism. All of these
disorders affect children or have their onset in
adolescence. However, studies are needed using
certain animal models of behaviors that have
some of the correlates of the human condition in
order to study the cellular and circuit basis of the
dysfunction. This cross-disciplinary work, or
translational research, may ultimately provide
more accurate explication of brain dysfuntions
that lead to mental illness.
Even in tractable animal models, such as the
rodent, where the vast majority of cellular and
genetic approaches to brain development are
possible, relatively few investigators are using
interdisciplinary approaches to study the
mechanisms through which activity on an altered
hormonal milieu regulates the development of
brain synapses and circuits. In addition, there are
relatively few good normative data on the
development of children’s brains (neuroimaging,
emotional regulation, EEG asymmetry, sensory
process event-related potentials) and even fewer
that tie brain development to controlled studies of
behavioral development. With the ability to use
imaging in children comes the opportunity to
study the development of a number of relevant
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