Link Between Brain Systems Implicated In Schizophrenia Identified
The finding suggests that schizophrenia could result from a malfunction anywhere in the link between these three brain circuits.
“This discovery lays the groundwork for studies that may lead to more effective treatments for schizophrenia,” said Duane Alexander, M.D., director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the NIH institute where the research was undertaken. “Theoretically, each of these interrelated brain mechanisms could be the focus of drug therapy.”
The study was published online in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” The research was conducted by Andres Buonanno, Ph.D., and his colleagues in the Section on Molecular Neurobiology in NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Other authors of the paper were: Oh Bin Kwon, Daniel Paredes, Carmen M. Gonzalez, Joerg Neddens, and Detlef Vullhorst; all of the NICHD; and Luis Hernandez, of the Universidad de los Andes, Merida, Venezuela.
Schizophrenia affects about 1 percent of the U.S. population. Symptoms include delusions, hallucinations, disordered thinking and social withdrawal.
The finding ties together three previously separate bodies of research on the nature of schizophrenia, relating findings on the hereditary basis of the disorder to observations about how certain drugs affect the brain circuits.
Dr. Buonanno and his colleagues found that a molecule known as Neuregulin-1 starts a sequence of events in which a second molecule, dopamine, functions like a volume control knob to turn up or turn down the intensity of brain electrical activity correlated with long-term memory and related brain functions.
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