Psychopharmacology - Call for papers: Spanning the spectrum of social behavior: towards more translationally relevant animal models
We are pleased to announce an upcoming Special Issue of Psychopharmacology on Social Behaviors based on the 2022 EBPS Workshop. For decades our understanding of neuropsychiatric disorders has been primarily based on preclinical studies using animal models. However, despite 50 years of progress in our fundamental understanding of human biology and the emergence of powerful new technologies, the translation of this knowledge into effective new treatments and health measures has been slow. We believe that this impasse is partly due to limitations in animal models, such as the omission of social factors, which play a major role in the etiology of human psychiatric disorders. Social factors include ethologically complex behavior with a spectrum ranging from positive affiliative social interaction to agitation and aggression. Both affiliative and aggressive interactions can be rewarding for either humans or laboratory animals. They can also be distal (manipulations of social context early in life, or in the homecage only, etc.) or proximal (present at the time of the experiment). Recently, to improve the translational utility of rodent models, these behaviors have increasingly been incorporated into preclinical animal models to study their effect on neuropsychiatric disorders and their underlying neural mechanisms. We are excited to invite you to contribute to a special issue of Psychopharmacology on Social Behaviors. We welcome both review articles and empirical papers, including submissions from all types of research including preclinical and clinical investigations. We hope to set the stage for future collaborative studies to utilize social behaviors to help bridge the translational gap between animal models and their clinical analog, thereby improving strategies for identifying novel therapeutic targets for the successful treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders.
Contact details of Guest Editor(s): Christelle Baunez (christelle.baunez@cnrs.fr) Marco Venniro (marco.venniro@som.umaryland.edu) Daniele Caprioli (daniele.caprioli@uniroma1.it) Sam A Golden (sagolden@uw.edu)
Deadline for submissions: Please notify co-editors of intent to submit by Sept 30th 2023. Final submissions will be due by October 31st 2023.
How to submit: Please follow the submission guidelines (this opens in a new tab) and submit your article via the Psychopharmacology online submission system. Please also select the special issue option during submission and mention the special issue in your covering letter to the editor.