ious parts of the cortex in people with schizophrenia.The out-of-place cells are large residues of the neural subplate, a structure that guides other neurons to their proper sites. The subplate forms in the fourth month of pregnancy. It gradually disappears almost entirely within the first month of life, having performed its task of aiming neurons toward their location in the cortex. Dr Steven G Patkin, a psychiatrist at the University of California at Irvine said “If you disrupt this migration cells end up in the wrong place or have faulty connections – and that’s what we found in the brains of the schizophrenic patients" . (www.schizophrenia.com/news/causes2.html) One question that needs to be asked is why no symptoms of schizophrenia appear for 20 years or more if the brain abnormalities are present from birth. Dr Robin Murray, a British psychiatrist studied this and found subtle childhood differences among those who later developed schizophrenia. The development of the schizophrenic group on average was delayed. (www.schizophrenia.com/news/causes2.html) In other research, a higher rate of schizophrenia was found among children in the Netherlands born to women who were pregnant in the winter of 1944 – 45 when the Nazis blockaded Dutch cities, which suggests that malnutrition could also play a role. Several studies since then have shown that there tends to be a higher rate of schizophrenia among children born in winter or early spring. (Kalat, 1998). (See appendix two).As the above information has shown, schizophrenia is a treatable disease that affects 1 – 2 % of the world’s population. The symptoms can be managed through medication but as of yet there is no cure. The cause is unknown but there are several plausible theories. Researchers can only hope that future work will shed a brighter light on this debilitating disease. ...
