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People who suffer from Schizophrenia show early abnormalities in the structure of their brains, a new study suggests.

For years, the mechanism behind the abnormal social behavior that characterizes many schizophrenic patients has been a mystery. A little known fact is that marked changes in memory, learning, attention span and decision-making precede the experience of the psychosis (which is almost a late stage in the progression of the disease) and a late or incorrect diagnosis and the lack of effective treatment options can destroy a sufferer's quality of life.

Even though Scientists have known for awhile that people who suffer from schizophrenia show abnormalities in the structure of their brains, a new study by researchers for the first time have detected similar abnormalities in brain scans of people who were considered at high risk for schizophrenia or other psychotic illnesses but who did not yet have full-blown symptoms.

The subjects in the study who went on to develop psychoses had relatively lesser activity in brain areas involved in attention span and higher mental processes like planning, emotion and memory, the researchers found.

According to experts, the study's results offered the possibility that imaging techniques might eventually be used to predict who will develop schizophrenia, a debilitating illness that affects more than 2.8 million Americans. Doctors could then offer treatment while the disease was still in its earliest stages, possibly preventing further damage to the brain.

Building on her groundbreaking work on facial recognition and neuroimaging, Prof. Talma Hendler of Tel Aviv University's Department of Psychology is hoping to make early diagnosis a reality by identifying the physical markers of mental illness - particularly schizophrenia - inside the brain. “With better diagnosis, plus earlier and more disease-specific treatment, we can make a real difference in the lives of these patients,” says Prof. Hendler.

To study the physical manifestation of schizophrenia, Hendler used brain imaging to illustrate differences between the brain activity of schizophrenic patients and healthy adults. Hendler's findings, published recently in the journal Human Brain Mapping, showed that when presented with photographs of emotional faces with bizarre characteristics, the brains of schizophrenic patients were much less reactive than established norms.

In her previous research published in the journal Neuron, when shown a bizarre "funny face", healthy minds respond with selective activity within the brain, sounding the alarm that there is something disturbing about the image. Prof Hendler then posited that although this selective response is found in visual areas, it has distributed effects in the brain; “The visual areas of the brain are highly connected to other areas, including the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, but in schizophrenic patients, there is a diminished connection between the various parts, leading to disturbed integration of information — and thus to distorted experiences," she says.

Why Develop Early Screening Processes and Better Treatments?

“Recognizing facial emotions is a very early process, so young children could be screened for a predisposition to mental disease by measuring their brain connectivity while detecting emotional cues,” Prof. Hendler explains. An objective early marker of the disease would be especially useful for those already considered high risk. With early diagnosis to guide individually tailored treatment, it may be possible to reduce the effect of the disease and even prevent its outbreak.

By identifying the physical characteristics of a mental disorder, Prof. Hendler is also paving the way for new types of treatment. “Current drugs treat the abnormal behavior, not the brain disorder that is causing the behavior,” she says, “We want to be able to develop more specific treatments based on objective brain markers, which are the actual characteristics of the disease.”

Source: aftau/NYT