Decomposition of brain diffusion imaging data uncovers latent schizophrenias with distinct patterns of white matter anisotropy, in NeuroImage, Vol. 120, October 2015. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.06.083
“…scans of patients with schizophrenia revealed various abnormalities in portions of the corpus callosum [the structure that connects the two brain hemispheres]… patients with specific features in one part of the corpus callosum typically displayed bizarre and disorganized behavior. In other patients, irregularities in a different part of that structure were associated with disorganized thinking and speech and symptoms such as a lack of emotion. Other brain abnormalities in the corpus callosum were associated with delusions or hallucinations.”
Very interesting considering the considerable research during the late '90s and '00s suggesting that both over- and under-connection (via the corpus callosum) of specific parts of the two brain hemispheres are seen in people who are over- and under-reactive to – emotions and thoughts related to perceived threat.
This and other psychiatric issues related to the corpus callosum were described in depth in Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, Cambridge, MA: Yale U. Press, 2011.
The upshot for pts with sz is that it may be possible to utilize very precise micro-surgical and/or non-invasive cross-stream radiation (like the proton guns used to destroy cancerous tumors) to knock out specific sections of the corpus callosum in sz pts.
Schizophrenia symptoms linked to abnormalities in brain’s corpus callosum
Using advanced brain imaging, researchers have matched certain behavioral symptoms of schizophrenia to features of the brain’s anatomy. The findings, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, could be a step toward improving diagnosis and treatment of schizophrenia.
The study, available online in the journal NeuroImage, will appear in print Oct. 15.
“By looking at the brain’s anatomy, we’ve shown there are distinct subgroups of patients with a schizophrenia diagnosis that correlates with symptoms,” said senior investigator C. Robert Cloninger, MD, PhD, the Wallace Renard Professor of Psychiatry and a professor of genetics. “This gives us a new way of thinking about the disease. We know that not all patients with schizophrenia have the same issues, and this helps us understand why.”
Why would one wish to replace sections of the brain that create “problems?” (The research in McGilchrist’s remarkable tome suggest that over-connection via the CC may be as problem-inducing as under-connection, so…)
cc: @astefano
Are you aware of what anti-Ps do? If not, I will explain.
Anti-P medications knock out a substantial portion of the function of a chain of bundled nerve cells leading from the insula (the locus of perception) through the limbic emotion regulation system to the pituitary gland that controls the autonomic fight or flight response. Use them long enough (say, many years) and many of the individual cells in those chains of bundle cells will die from disuse. But not all of them. Just as would be the case if one selectively knocked out only a small # of the connective nerve cells in the CC; something that is often possible (with respect to tissue type) with the very fine control of radiation afforded by proton guns.
Although the location we’re speaking of is not the same as the one that was targeted in the lobotomies of the 1930s, and proton radiation would “hit” only a tiny fraction of as many nerve cells as the knife did in those days, it would pretty likely produce a reduction in the over-firing of those specific nerve cells that appears to be related to the three sets of symptoms boldfaced above.
One may also be interested to know that CC sections are occasionally used to put and end to the suffering of seizures that cannot be treated successfully with medications.
I don’t have a horse in the race. I am merely discussing possibilities.
Im thinking that everything is connected in the brain-if something is altered, (or taken away) wont that affect whatever it is connected to? Maybe hurt something that wasnt misfiring? Yes, I was thinking of lobotomies. is that radiation so specific that it wouldnt touch anything else? If those nerve cells were killed-would they fire at all?And what would be the effect of that?
I still dream in very high-definition. It’s all quite vivid. No need to mess with my brain, it has clearly chosen an alternative course of life, that is all.
I’m not doing invasive surgery or drugs, so long as my dreams are this mesmerizing. I refuse to let go of that facet of my consciousness.
