Microscopic Findings in the Cortex and Hippocampus of Schizophrenic and Schizoaffective Patients

Abstract

Postmortem studies reported over the past 10 years have demonstrated a variety of neuropathological changes, including shrinkage (Bogerts et al. 1985; Falkai and Bogerts 1986; Brown et al. 1986) and neuronal loss (Benes et al. 1986, 1991a; Falkai et al. 1988; Jeste and Lohr 1989), in several different corticolimbic regions of schizophrenics. Because there has been no convincing evidence of gliosis in the brains of schizophrenic patients (Benes et al. 1986, 1991a; Brown et al. 1986; Falkai and Bogerts 1986), a typical adult pattern of neuronal degeneration, like that seen in Alzheimer’s disease, does not account for the observed loss of neurons. An alternative pathogenic mechanism that is believed to account for the reduced numbers of neurons observed in postmortem schizophrenic brain is a disturbance of normal cell migration during early brain development (Kovelman and Scheibel 1984; Jakob and Beckmann 1986; Benes et al. 1986, 1991a; Akbarian et al. 1993).