Fig. 1

Epigenetic therapy in neuropsychiatric disorders. A combination of external and internal factors can induce epigenetic changes in the normal healthy brain during ageing but also under pathological conditions, including neurodegenerative disorders or psychiatric diseases. Epigenetic therapy, such as pharmacological treatment with DNA-demethylating drugs or HDAC inhibitors, can reverse the distorted epigenetic modifications and induce specific gene expression programs. Two main strategies can be achieved: first, the use of epigenetic drugs can induce adult neurogenesis by enhancing cellular reprogramming from neural precursor cells and, second, changes in epigenetic modifications can reverse gene expression of genes involved in neuronal dysfunction and relevant for the disease