Animal Models for the Symptoms of Mania

Methods for modeling a human illness must have relevance to the clinical description of the abnormal condition, and they should be capable of generating an experimental condition that responds to the treatments commonly used with that disorder. In the case of mania, there are some immediate problems with definition of the syndrome. The following discussion is based on the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-III (1980) classifications of mania and depression. However, it is suggested that this classification may be deficient in some important respects (), and any critique of neuromethods for inducing an animal state resembling mania must take these shortcomings into account.