Hypothesis of subcortical visual pathway impairment in schizophrenia

Abstract

Schizophrenia is a severe mental disease involving both neurological and psychiatric abnormalities. Previous studies mainly focus on damage to high-order cognitive dysfunction, which is related to high-level cortical regions such as the prefrontal and temporal lobes. Recent research reveals that impairment of low-level sensory processing occurs in the early stage of schizophrenia, which may be due to impairment of the subcortical magnocellular visual pathway. Moreover, the structure and function of some important nuclei in a subcortical visual pathway are reported to be abnormal in patients with schizophrenia. Inspired by the above evidence, we propose a hypothesis that impairment of the Superior Colliculus-Pulvinar-Amygdala subcortical visual pathway may be involved in the pathological mechanisms of early stages of schizophrenia. And we propose a possible method to detect dysfunction of this subcortical pathway through examining topological processing, which may help early diagnosis of schizophrenia.