Neuropathology of schizophrenia

It is no longer tenable to view schizophrenia as a ‘functional’ disorder, lacking any structural involvement of the brain. There is a neuropathology, albeit one about which our understanding is still rudimentary, and which is far from allowing schizophrenia to be diagnosable from a brain scan or down a microscope. Both neurons and glia are affected. Changes are prominent in, but not limited to, the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. The neuropathology is likely to represent and reflect an altered connectivity and circuitry, caused at least partly by the susceptibility genes and mediated through a perturbation of brain development and synaptic plasticity.