Morphological Backgrounds of Pathochemical Studies in Major Psychoses

Abstract

The morphological substrates of major psychoses are controversial. While structural changes in the brain are commonly present in dementias and organic psychoses, no consistent deficits have been substantiated in schizophrenia and other psychoses that are associated with a variety of pathochemical changes. While a wide variety of structural and cytological changes described in schizophrenic brains¹ are considered by most authors as nonspecific coincidental or agonal changes unrelated to the primary psychbsis^2,3 both neuroradiological^4-6 and neuropathological studies suggest that structural deficits including brain atrophy and neuronal loss and gliosis in some brain areas may occur in some subsets of schizophrenia, mainly in chronic cases and defect states akin to the chronic type II syndrome of negative symptoms⁶. A series of neuroradiological, CBF and histological data have been believed to indicate an “anatomic al locus of the pathology of schizophrenia” that has been tentatively related to disorders of subcorticocortical, thalamic and mesolimbic systems1,6.