Is There a Neuroanatomic Basis for Schizophrenia? An Old Question Revisited

Abstract

In the past century, the finding of ventricular enlargement in structural brain imaging studies of schizophrenia has stimulated interest in the question of whether this disorder may involve an underlying neurodegenerative process. Recent microscopic investigations have revealed a subtle loss of neurons but no gliosis in several corticolimbic regions of schizophrenic brain, a pattern that is not consistent with a typical adult pattern of neuronal degeneration. The fact that a variety of histopathological changes have been found in cortical layer II of schizophrenic subjects has suggested that an early disturbance of neuronal migration may play an etiological role in this disorder. Overall, many investigators now consider schizophrenia to be a neurodevel opmental disorder in which a latent defect present from birth requires normal maturational changes in the brain to trigger the characteristic onset of illness during adolescence and early adulthood. The Neuroscientist 1:104-115, 1995