Scientists Take Major Step Toward Understanding Schizophrenia
For the new study, researchers from across the U.S. collaborated to investigate how genetics influence an individual’s chance of developing the disease, isolating one particular gene that seems to drive that risk.
They found that people who carry a gene that speeds up or strengthens the normal developmental process of “synaptic pruning” in the brain are at a higher risk for developing schizophrenia. Typically, the brain uses this process to shed weak or unneeded neural connections as it matures. This happens primarily during adolescence and young adulthood, and is concentrated in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is associated with high-level thinking, planning and decision-making.
But in people with schizophrenia, the synaptic pruning process goes into overdrive. This may explain why those individuals have been shown to have fewer neural connections in their prefrontal cortex, and why the disorder almost always shows up during adolescence or young adulthood.
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