Schizophrenia abnormal brain development

CT and MRI scans have demonstrated enlargement of the lateral ventricles and widened cortical sulci. This finding suggests that either there is brain atrophy or (more likely) that in some types of schizophrenia there has been abnormal brain development (see Weinberger 1996). 

If schizophrenia is caused by abnormal early brain development (cf. Figs. 10—15 and 10—16), it may be virtually impossible to reverse such abnormalities in adulthood. On the other hand, some day it may be possible to compensate for such postulated neurodevelopmental difficulties by other mechanisms or to interrupt an ongoing mechanism still present in the symptomatic patient. Therefore, it will be critical to learn what neurodevelopmental abnormalities may exist in schizophrenia in order to devise strategies for reducing their potential impact. It may even be possible to identify such abnormalities in presymptomatic individuals or to exploit the plasticity of adult neurons to compensate for neurodevelopmentally endowed dysfunction. These are bold and unsubstantiated theoretical extrapolations based on... 

Before the development of brain imaging techniques, neuroanatomical correlates were primarily related to structural lesions of the CNS. Despite the fact that abnormalities have been found in both schizophrenia and affective illness, interest in the neuropathology of mood disorders has not been as intense as for schizophrenia. 

Another line of research is focused on the neurobiological development of the human brain in relation to schizophrenia. It has been hypothesised that schizophrenia is due to abnormal neurodevelopment, which results in a static encephalopathy that usually becomes manifest in adolescence. This abnormal development leads to morphological deviations such as enlarged or reduced brain structures, a disrupted communication between different brain structures, alterations in neuron density or decreased neuron size, and abnormal neuronal... 

---