How shifts in excitation-inhibition balance may lead to psychiatric disorders
Alterations in excitation/inhibition (E/I) balance constitute an emerging theme in clinical neuroscience, wrote Anticevic and Dr. John Lisman of Brandeis University in a commentary accompanying the special issue. The effects of E/I imbalance stretch across diagnostic boundaries, as indicated by the variety of psychiatric disorders addressed in the reviews, including schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder , major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder. Presenting both human and animal studies, the reviews summarize research on the developmental aspects of E/I regulation and how alterations in circuit stability and compensatory mechanisms with negative effects may emerge when the E/I balance tips. In particular, multiple reviews frame the disturbances in the E/I balance around altered glutamate synaptic development -- the excitatory arm of the E/I balance -- and present hypotheses for how those developmental alterations may lead to impaired structural and functional circuitry in...