I must say that this story is pretty bearded. Even in the early years of the 20th century, the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bloeler, who introduced the word "schizophrenia", preferred to use it in the plural: "schizophrenia", emphasizing that, at least, the disease has several significantly different forms. But Bloiler did not have the opportunity to look directly into the skulls of patients, while modern scientists do.
Scientists from the Penn Medicine University of Pennsylvania decided to do this. They formed two groups of subjects. Both included people living in the United States, China and Germany. In the experimental group there were 307 people suffering from schizophrenia, in the control group - 364 healthy (or insufficiently examined).
All participants were under 45 years old.
All of them had to undergo a CT scan. The results were analyzed using modern mathematical methods, which made it possible to build an averaged model of the brain of a healthy person and compare it with patients by conducting a statistical analysis of the differences.
It is generally accepted that schizophrenia is caused by a decrease in gray matter mass, which leads to cognitive impairment. It turned out that this is not always the case.
In 115 patients (40%), the brain was not reduced, and its structure and mass were practically indistinguishable from those of healthy people. The only violation was an increase in the striatum - the anatomical structure of the telencephalon related to the basal nuclei of the hemispheres.
It is generally believed that this structure is involved in the regulation of complex movements, and its disruptions lead to such unpleasant things as Tourette's syndrome and Parkinson's disease. The striatum was not previously suspected of being involved in cognitive functions, but, obviously, not everything is so simple.
For details, see an article published in Brain magazine.
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Sergey Sysoev