Quantitative Brain Measurements in Chronic Schizophrenia

Despite extensive gross and microscopic scrutiny, no consistent pathological findings have emerged from studies of autopsy material from schizophrenic patients and it is concluded that there were no consistent findings at autopsy that could be construed as characteristic of schizophrenia.

Abstract

Despite extensive gross and microscopic scrutiny, no consistent pathological findings have emerged from studies of autopsy material from schizophrenic patients. Dunlap (1924) carried out the first controlled study involving schizophrenic and control brains and concluded that ‘there was not even a suspicion of consistent organic brain disease as a basis for the psychosis of schizophrenia’. More recently both Wolf and Cowen (1952), and Weinstein (1954), reviewed the neuropathological literature and concluded that there were no consistent findings at autopsy that could be construed as characteristic of schizophrenia. These authors felt that earlier claims were based on failure to appreciate the range of normal variation in the brain as well as a failure to include an adequate control population in the study.