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:
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1.
brains without deviations of the sulcogyral pattern of the temporal lobe or abnormal gross configuration (n=22);
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2.
brains with abnormal sulcogyral pattern of the temporal lobe or abnormal gross configuration (n=42):
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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);
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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