The aim of the study is to relate the clinical phenomenology of schizophrenia to disorders of brain structure and function. The research is based on the postulate that the symptoms and behavior observed in schizophrenic disorders have anatomical and physiological substrates and, consequently, that our understanding of schizophrenia is linked to the unraveling of brain-behavior links. As a result of recent advances in brain imaging techniques, which have broadened and enriched the neurological data base of schizophrenia, hypotheses regarding brain anomalies in schizophrenia and their relationship to clinical phenomenology can now be more reliably and profitably explored. This study proposes to utilize evoked potential data using the new noninvasive neurophysiological topographic technique of brain electrical activity mapping and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), together with computerized tomography (CT) to define brain structural and functional abnormalities in schizophrenics. These data will be compared to those from matched normal controls and affective disorder patients. Clinical symptom measures include: thought disorder, negative and positive symptoms, and clinical status measures such as age of onset, premorbid functioning, and severity and duration of illness. The correlations among anatomical, neurophysiological, and clinical measures will be determined in order to define which symptom/sign groupings occur together to further define subgroups within the schizophrenic syndrome, perhaps reflecting different pathologies.
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