Am J Psychiatry 1984; 141:1430-1432
Copyright © 1984 by American Psychiatric Association
Eye-blinking and cerebral ventricular size in chronic schizophrenic patients
JE Kleinman, CN Karson, DR Weinberger, WJ Freed, KF Berman and RJ Wyatt
Spontaneous eye-blinking, a possible measure of central dopaminergic
activity, was studied in 55 drug-free chronic schizophrenic patients
subdivided by cerebral ventricular size. Blink rates were higher in
schizophrenic patients than in normal control subjects, regardless of
cerebral ventricle size. Neuroleptics lowered blink rates in patients with
normal ventricles but did not affect blink rates in patients with large
ventricles. Insofar as blinking is a dopaminergic parameter, these findings
suggest that the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia is most relevant in
patients with normal ventricles.
