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Prenatal developmental disturbances in the limbic allocortex in schizophrenics

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Summary

Sixty-four autopsied brains of schizophrenic patients were neuropathologically examined and compared with 10 brains of non-schizophrenic controls. Clinical diagnoses were established retrospectively according to the Research Diagnostic Criteria and the International Classification of Diseases. We found:

  1. 1.

    brains without deviations of the sulcogyral pattern of the temporal lobe or abnormal gross configuration (n=22);

  2. 2.

    brains with abnormal sulcogyral pattern of the temporal lobe or abnormal gross configuration (n=42):

  1. a)

    with definite cytoarchitectonic abnormalities of the rostral entorhinal region in the parahippocampal gyrus and, in 16 cases only, in the ventral insular cortex (n=20);

  2. b)

    with equivocal changes of the cytoarchitecture in these two regions (n=22).

Generally, these anatomical abnormalities were asymmetric. The histological findings in the two limbic regions consisted mainly of poorly developed structure in the upper layers, with a heterotopic displacement of single groups of nerve cells in the entorhinal region. Particularly, the disturbed structure of the second layer Pre-α in medial and central fields of the entorhinal region, situated in the parahippocampal gyrus (group 2 a), suggests a disturbance of neuronal migration in a later phase of cortical development.

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Jakob, H., Beckmann, H. Prenatal developmental disturbances in the limbic allocortex in schizophrenics. J. Neural Transmission 65, 303–326 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01249090

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01249090

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