Neuropathology of schizophrenias

Abstract

Up to now it is not known whether the ventricular enlargement in schizophrenics demonstrated by neuroradiological investigations is caused by a general brain atrophy or a more or less selective degeneration of one or several areas. Therefore, the volumes of several parts of the basal ganglia, of the diencephalon and of the limbic system were determined by planimetry of myelin-stained serial sections in post mortem brains of 14 schizophrenic patients and 13 control cases. The important limbic structures of the temporal lobe (amygdala, hippocampal formation), the ventricle closely surrounding structures of the diencephalon, and the pallidum internum are significantly smaller in the schizophrenic group, whereas the volumes of the pallidum externum, of the three parts of the striatum (caudatum, putamen, n. accumbens), of the red nucleus, and of the large thalamic cell groups have not significantly changes. The volume reductions are interpreted as focal degenerative shrinkages of unknown etiology.