Am J Psychiatry 1987; 144:1277-1282
Copyright © 1987 by American Psychiatric Association
A relationship between anatomical and physiological brain pathology in schizophrenia: lateral cerebral ventricular size predicts cortical blood flow
KF Berman, DR Weinberger, RC Shelton and RF Zec
Clinical Brain Disorders Branch, St. Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, DC 20032.
The authors studied the relationship between lateral cerebral ventricular
size and regional cerebral blood flow during mental activation in 30
patients with schizophrenia. Patients with large ventricles had diffusely
lower cortical gray matter blood flow than patients with small ventricles.
In addition, an inverse correlation between ventricular size and prefrontal
blood flow was observed while patients were attempting to solve a
neuropsychological test specifically related to the prefrontal cortex.
These data suggest that structural brain pathology impairs prefrontal
physiology in schizophrenia, implicating a neural mechanism for the
intellectual deficits characteristic of this disorder.
