This completely new and updated issue takes a focused look at addiction psychiatry in three sections: Diagnostics, Therapeutics, and New Directions. Dr. Danovitch, from Cedars-Sinai and Dr. Mariani from Columbia hone in on the most rapidly advancing and relevant areas of addiction for practitioners today, from defining addiction (implications of DSM-V), to genetics and neurobiology, to specific treatment options for a variety of patient populations: for pregnant women, adolescents, and patients suffering from chronic pain, for example.? A variety of addiction types are discussed (ie, opioid, stimulant, and cannabis).? The issue closes with discussions of emerging trends, systems of care, investigational therapeutics and the role of the criminal justice system.

Four chapters represent the intense current effort to understand the way in which the mitochondrion controls the activation of the final stages of cell death. Another four articles attack the problem from the other side. How do specific insults in particular human or mouse neuro-degenerative diseases translate into mechanisms that will not only allow us to better understand what is happening in these patients but also, with luck, allow for development of more efficient and specific drugs in the future? Firstly, the concept of a central common cell death pathway, originally derived from studies on the nematode, has been an outstanding productive paradigm in bringing together different strands of research. Secondly, truly striking links have been made between results obtained in the culture dish (or even cell-free systems) and the diseased human brain.