Brandeis researchers identify potential cause of schizophrenic symptoms
Abnormal brain waves may provide drug target for therapeutic treatments
At Brandeis University, researchers believe they have discovered an abnormality in the schizophrenic brain that could be responsible for many of the disease’s symptoms and could provide a drug target for therapeutic treatments.
Led by John Lisman, the Zalman Abraham Kekst Chair in Neuroscience and professor of biology, the research team published their findings in a recent issue of the Journal of Biological Psychiatry. The paper was co-authored by Aranda Duan, Carmen Varela, Yuchun Zhang, Yinghua Shen, Lealia Xiong, and Matthew Wilson.
Unusual neural oscillations – brain waves – have long been associated with schizophrenia. The oscillations, called delta waves, are similar to slow oscillations seen in normal brains during sleep, but in schizophrenic brains, they occur during wakefulness. The connection between these oscillations and schizophrenic symptoms, particularly cognitive deficits such as memory impairment, has long been unclear.