clude this issue, preferably with some kind of standardized test for lack of insight. While little research has been done on brain abnormalities and lack of insight in schizophrenia, an association has been found in some studies for a connection between frontal lobe abnormalities (evidenced by poor performance on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test) and lack of insight in schizophrenia. Lack of insight is definitely correlated with frontal lobe abnormalities as shown by studies of anosognosia and Alzheimer’s disease. There is a possibility, then, that anosognosia and schizophrenia have a common cause for lack of insight (Ghaemi 786). There are other neurological impairments in schizophrenics. According to Husted, studies have shown that many patients with schizophrenia have small hippocampi, enlarged ventricles, and possibly communication damage between the hippocampus and cerebral cortex. Unfortunately, there is not enough evidence to for any of these abnormalities including frontal lobe dysfunction to be “necessary or sufficient for the diagnosis of schizophrenia” (37). Many scientists have found some association between frontal lobe dysfunction and schizophrenia, but just as many have also found no association. Dickerson, Boronow, Ringel, and Parente did comprehensive neuropsychological testing including “the Vocabulary, Arithmetic, Digit Span, Block Design, and Digit Span subtests of the patient, the Logical Memory test of the Wechsler Memory Scale, the Rey-Osterreith Complex Figure Test, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, the Trail Making Test, the Halstead-Wepman Aphasia Screening Test, and the Chicago Word Fluency test” (196). Despite their thoroughness, Dickerson et al. found no significant correlations between neurological impairment and lack of insight. In another study, Peralta and Cuesta, show a correlation between lack of insight and better performance on verbal and visual memory tasks (560). ...
