Am J Psychiatry 1982; 139:427-430
Copyright © 1982 by American Psychiatric Association
Hemispheric asymmetries and schizophrenia
NC Andreasen, JW Dennert, SA Olsen and AR Damasio
Investigators have hypothesized that schizophrenic patients have abnormal
left hemisphere function or deviations from normal function asymmetry. It
has also been suggested that schizophrenic patients have reversal of normal
structural asymmetries. The authors measured frontal and occipital petalia
and frontal and occipital width of each hemisphere on the CT scans of 43
right-handed schizophrenic patients and 40 right-handed control subjects.
There were no significant differences in structural asymmetry between the
groups. The 8 left- handed schizophrenic patients may have had abnormal
functional asymmetries; their mean ventricular-brain ratio, a possible
indirect indicator of cerebral atrophy, was higher than that of the
right-handed patients.
