The Psychiatric and Cognitive Disease Models Derived from the Dysfunction of Neurobiology and Aberrant Immunity in the Brain

A recent view, in which certain immune cells in the brain may affect our mind and may cause the emergence of psychiatric and cognitive diseases, is getting attention these days. This is of particular interest because the immune system is generally known as the system for body homeostasis and combatting against infection from viruses and the intrusion of microorganisms. However, it is still complicated by many questions on the subject of how and why the aberrance of immune systems results in the dysfunction of neurons and our own mind. Here, we would like to gather together outstanding researchers who are advancing the knowledge of this field, and we would like to organize their original studies and reviews, in order to introduce them to a broad audience.

This Special Issue welcomes the submission of original research and review manuscripts focusing on mechanisms of psychiatric and cognitive diseases, aberrant brain immunity, and neurological dysfunction, aiming to approach the origin of ourselves and to give perspectives on recovery from these diseases. We also invite studies for the diagnosis and therapy of a wide range of pathologies, helping us to achieve an overview of this exciting and interdisciplinary field of biomedical research.

a. Focus:

Mechanisms of psychiatric and cognitive diseases focusing on aberrant brain immunity, and neurological dysfunction.

b. Scope:

Neurophysiology, neurobiology, anatomy, transcriptomics, behavior, brain imaging and immunity. We expect combinational studies of various disciplines.

c. Purpose:

To provide interdisciplinary and comprehensive views on broad mental illnesses.

To tackle various psychiatric and cognitive diseases.

To reveal mechanisms inherited by immunity and their transcripts in the brain.

To provide perspectives for therapeutic strategies: gene manipulation, drug discovery, alternative therapy, and others.

The etiology of many psychiatric diseases and cognitive dysfunction may not be due to one single reason, although a number of simplified ideas have already been introduced in recent decades. It could be explained by viral and microbial infection, environmental factors (e.g., social interaction, stress, affection, educational processes, events in distinct life stages, aging, and else), genetics (e.g., genome, epigenome, transcriptome, and else), neurobiological modulation (e.g., brain function, neural circuit, physiology in the single neurons, synaptic transmission, and their plasticity). It also aims to provide viewpoints from clinical studies, including diagnoses, fMRI, and human samples of psychiatric and cognitive diseases. Thus, to disentangle such a complex mechanism, we believe that approaches from broad research fields would be helpful, but these need to be formed on solid basic knowledge.

Prof. Dr. Gen Ohtsuki
Prof. Dr. Md Shamim Hossain
Guest Editors

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• brain immunity (microglia, macrophages, T cells, etc.) 
• neurophysiological modulation 
• genomic psychiatry 
• mental dysfunction 
• psychiatric diseases 
• cognitive disorders 
• brain aging 
• immunotherapy 
• metabolic therapy