How Can We Justify the Use of Lower Animal Models to Understand the Pathophysiology of Schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia may result from an alteration of the communication between neurons which results in the perturbation of cognitive functions difficult to analyse since symptoms do not exist in lower animals and most cognitive functions are differently expressed than in humans. In the standard developmental model of "Lipska-Weinberger", a number of passively acquired memories were weaker than in normal animals, whereas more stringent forms of learning were less impaired, what reminds the difficulties of patients. They were interpreted as mismanagements of the capacity to attend automatically to relevant factors of the environment. But, our attempts to model the precise mismanagement of attention still remained unsuccessful. We suggest that more refined behavioural investigations are needed, especially for understanding the management of mental representations. Considering the cellular mechanisms of the disease is an other insight necessary for the development of new therapeutic strategies.