Schizophrenia developmental hypothesis

The neurodevelopmental hypothesis of schizophrenia posits that the disorder is due to a subtle defect in prenatal brain development but is not clinically manifest until many years later (Murray and Lewis, 1987 Weinberger, 1987). This theory has two essential components a presumption of developmental neuropathology and an expectation that this developmental neuropathology results in a pattern of brain malfunction which ultimately produces the symptoms of schizophrenia. 

Horrobin, D.F. 1998. The membrane phospholipid hypothesis as a biochemical basis for the neuro-developmental concept of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research, 30(3), 193-208. 

---