Intergrating psychiatric nosology: from symptoms to syndromes

Psychiatric disorders represent the most complicated expression of human behaviour. Psychiatric phenomenology has been described in details showing pivotal differences among various psychiatric syndromes. However, in daily practice, the same medications are used to treat different disorders. This fascination invites a challenge: a need to describe high level, complex behavioural impairments in terms of underlying neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and neurochemistry. The introduction and refinement of the advanced functional neuroimaging techniques has reinvigorated the exploration of the neuronal bases for normal behaviour and emotion. These developments, together with improvements in structural imaging and rapid advances in a number of neuroscientific fields, have played a major part, over the last few decades, in re-establishing the concept of the brain in psychiatry.