Recent advances in the biosensing of neurotransmitters: material and method overviews towards the biomedical analysis of psychiatric disorders

Abstract

Neurotransmitters are the most important messengers of the nervous system, and any changes in their balances and activities can cause serious neurological, psychiatric and cognitive disorders such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. This review highlights the importance of biosensors as a powerful tool for the detection of neurotransmitters. The first part of this study is related to the introduction of neurotransmitters and their importance, and the routine methods in their identification are discussed later. The most attractive point in the present review is the integration of various biosensors in order to identify the neurotransmitters and assess their sensitivity and specificity more easily than the conventional methods. Also, the application of advanced nanomaterials in the biosensing of neurotransmitters is discussed. We hope that this study can be very striking and helpful for the research on the engineering of novel sensing biodevices for the detection of neurotransmitters in clinical samples.