Brain morphometry in recent decades has increased our understanding of the neural bases of psychiatric disorders by localizing anatomical disturbances to specific nuclei and subnuclei of the brain. At least some of these disturbances precede the overt expression of clinical symptoms and possibly are endophenotypes that could be used to diagnose an…

Over the past 50 years the concept of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has developed from the notion of a specific form of brain dysfunction to that of a heterogeneous set of related behaviours. The great advances in genetics, neuroimaging and neuropsychiatry have made it one of the best understood forms of complex mental…

Autism is one of the most heritable neurodevelopmental conditions and has an early onset, with symptoms being required to be present in the first 3 years of life in order to meet criteria for the "core" disorder in the classification systems. As such, the focus on identifying a prodrome over the past 20 years has been on pre-clinical…

Background: Etiological hypotheses of eating disorders, anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa have not produced informative research for predictably effective treatment. Methods: The rationale for applying a model of allostasis, a dysregulation of reward circuits with activation of brain and hormonal stress responses to maintain apparent stability,…

The past 50 years have seen dramatic changes in childhood psychopathology research. The goal of this overview is to contrast observational and experimental research approaches; both have grown more complex such that the boundary between these approaches may be blurred. Both are essential. Landmark observational studies with long-term follow-up…