except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights.Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) v Preface Mammalian central and peripheral nervous systems are highly complex at the structural, genetic and molecular levels, composed of multiple cell types and tissue structures. Thousands of genes, regulated at the genomic level via sequence variation or epigenetic regulation, are expressed at the RNA level and translated into proteins required to develop and maintain these cells and tissues, and along with small regulatory RNA molecules, lipids, and small molecule neurotransmitters, these gene products constitute the physical substrate for learning, memory, emotion, sensory perception, and consciousness itself. The potential for malfunction of this large number of complex biological systems is great, leading to the many behavioral and cognitive deficits observed in human psychiatric and neurological disorders, such as schizophrenia, autism and Alzheimer's disease.This Volume of Advances of Neurobiology discusses research designed to increase our understanding of the nervous system and its structures and activities, through the utilization of genomic and proteomic technologies, addressing facets including development and epigenetic regulation, functions in learning and memory, and changes associated with neurological and psychiatric disorders. Specifically, the development of high-throughput genomic and proteomic analysis technologies, including microarray and high-throughput DNA sequencing technology, as well as integrated protein separation and mass spectrometry analysis systems, have created the opportunity for researchers to collect datasets that include measurements for all or most of the RNA species or the complement of proteins, within a particular biological sample. These high dimensional datasets are being generated for different nervous system cells and tissues, such as laser-capture microdissected neurons, or samples of postmortem pre-frontal cortical tissue. Different approaches have then been utilized to extract pertinent information, and these range from comparisons of postmortem cells and/or tissues using samples collected from subjects with and without disease states, for example patients with Alzheimer's disease compared to control subjects, in order to discover differences between the samples that reflect aspects of the disease pathology, and that can then be investigated further to determine their role(s) in disease development. In addition, and in disorders such as autism, genome-wide expre...