PSY625WK3ASSIGNMENT.docx

BEHAVIORAL ASPECTS

Symptoms of Schizophrenia and its Correlation with Brain Structures

Natoya Wayne
PSY625: Biological Basis of Behavior
Dr. Irene Kovacs-Donaghy
University of Arizona Global Campus
May 30, 2021

Introduction

Schizophrenia is a rare disease which impacts about 1% of the world’s population. The symptoms usually start appearing in early adulthood. This dis has a drastic impact on the thoughts and behavior of a person. There is a wide range of symptoms that appear in schizophrenia. Because of the various symptoms that usually plague patients, they are unable to live a normal life in this society as these symptoms create hindrances in their normal behavior. Although still much is not known, according to research, the symptoms exhibited by the patients result from different abnormalities of different regions of the brain, which are described in this paper.

Symptoms of Schizophrenia

Symptoms of schizophrenia can be classified into three categories: Positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms. Positive symptoms are those psychotic behaviors that will make a patient delusional. This simply means the patients are unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy and will feel like they have lost touch with reality. Patients will have altered perceptions regarding changes in their senses, altered behavior, and abnormal thinking. A shared sense of reality is distorted among patients. More specifically, patients suffer from hallucinations (hearing or seeing unreal things), delusions (firm beliefs that are not supported by objective facts), unusual thinking, and disorganized speech (Morris, Griffiths, Le Pelley & Weickert, 2013).  Patients will also suffer from paranoia where they believe that the communication tools, such as television, the internet, or other broadcasting inventions, deliver special messages to them. Because of this, they think that they need some response in return. 
Negative symptoms are associated with distortion of normal emotions and behaviors towards social norms. The negative symptoms majorly include lack of motivation in life, lack of pleasure or enjoyment in routine life, social disconnection, difficulty in the expression of emotions, and abnormal functioning. Patients diagnosed with negative symptoms usually lack the motivation to do things because they cannot sustain their activities. Additionally, they will often exhibit a flat effect: reduced expression of emotions, i.e., reduced speaking, lack of facial expression, or voice tone (Marder & Galderisi, 2017). Cognitive symptoms can be subtle for some individuals who have schizophrenia, but they can be very prominent in other patients. Because of the onset of cognitive symptoms, patients can suffer from disruption in cognitive activities as these symptoms interfere with the cognitive activities.  For example, patients can find difficulty in continuing conversation, learning new things, or the process of memorization. They will also have changes in their memory for their thinking processes.  The cognitive symptoms interfere with the patient’s working memory, lowering understanding decision-making ability (Carbon & Correll, 2014). Patients with schizophrenia cannot be categorized into one group. Instead, they exhibit a combination of these symptoms.   In these combinations, sometimes a specific category becomes more prominent than others making it equally difficult for the patient. 
The exact cause of schizophrenia is unknown, but neuroimaging research has elaborated that some neural alterations and structural abnormalities can be central to the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. According to Brent, Thermenos, Keshavan, & Seidman (2013), evidence is found regarding brain abnormality in the regions as temporal lobes, prefrontal lobe, and Lateral ventricles. It has also been found that alterations in temporal and prefrontal or lead to neurocognitive deficiency.  According to the research, the deficiency in grey and white matter in specific brain regions is associated with social dysfunction in dis s like schizophrenia. It has also been found that brain abnormality due to schizophrenia affects certain areas, including cortical grey matter, cerebellum, hippocampus, and total brain volume.
The deficiency of cortical grey matter was examined and observed in patients affected with schizophrenia. Spurn et al. (2003) explain total brain volume loss progression, especially in adults affected by child onset schizophrenia. It is observed that patients with schizophrenia have significantly lower brain volume as compared to healthy people.  Similarly, a deficiency of grey matter is also observed in schizophrenic patients. Cortical grey matter holds an important place in the central nervous system.  Cortical grey matter contains all the necessary components required for neural connections through a brain; therefore, deficiency in grey matter leads to dysfunction of brain cells. Thompson et al. (2001) explained that deficits in the sensorimotor cortex, supplementary motor cortex are associated with motor disturbances in schizophrenic patients. The deficit in grey matter is related to the onset of certain positive symptoms in schizophrenia. 
Research reveals that the loss of grey matter begins in the parietal lobe. Furthermore, the loss of grey matter is progress in temporal and frontal lobes, leading to schizophrenia. According to Yildiz, Borgwardt & Berger (2011), disturbances in the parietal lobe led to dysfunction and are associated with delusions in schizophrenic patients. When the patient performs tasks related to the movement, they feel difficulty when the parietal lobe is disturbed i.e., disturbances in the temporal lobe, especially the deficiency of grey matter in the temporal lobe, leading to severe symptoms, including hallucinations and delusions. Hippocampus, located in the forebrain, is responsible for various functions. It plays an important role in navigation and memory. Damage to the hippocampus leads to disorientation and amnesia. Patients with positive symptoms find difficulty regarding long-term memory. Research regarding brain imaging reveals that in schizophrenic patients, the volume of hippocampal is decreased compared to healthy individuals.

Conclusion

Schizophrenia is a complicated brain dis that interferes with the normal life of people affected by it. Because of its wide range of symptoms that bears some similarity to other dis s, it is very difficult to diagnose at early stages. Most of the diagnosis is made possible in early to late adulthood. Major symptoms include hallucination, delusions, speech impairment, and disorganized speech, lack of emotion, distorted behavior, and difficulty with memory and these symptoms differ with patients. But most of them will exhibit or have a combination of these symptoms. The symptoms are the result of imbalance or deficiencies of different structures in the brain. Although sutures are being conducted to identify the exact cause, the patient usually has less grey matter than the healthy ones. These abnormalities and deficiencies in the brain structure are associated with schizophrenia. Additionally, the part of the brain associated with a specific function in the human body, e.g., grey matter, temporal, parietal, or frontal lobe, hinders the normal functioning. Because of these alterations and deficiencies, patients cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy, which distances them from society. 

References

Brent, B. K., Thermenos, H. W., Keshavan, M. S., & Seidman, L. J. (2013). Gray Matter Alterations in Schizophrenia High-Risk Youth and Early-Onset Schizophrenia: A Review of Structural MRI Findings. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 22(4), 689–714.
http://doi.org/10.1016/j.chc.2013.06.003
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Carbon, M., & Correll, C. U. (2014). Thinking and acting beyond the positive: the role of the cognitive and negative symptoms in schizophrenia. CNS spectrums, 19(S1), 35-53. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1092852914000601

Marder, S. R., & Galderisi, S. (2017). The current conceptualization of negative symptoms in schizophrenia. World Psychiatry, 16(1), 14-24. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20385

Morris, R., Griffiths, O., Le Pelley, M. E., & Weickert, T. W. (2013). Attention to irrelevant cues is related to positive symptoms in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia bulletin, 39(3), 575-582. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbr192

Sporn, A., Greenstein, D.K., Gogtay, N., Jefferies, N.O., Lenane, M., Gochman, P. (2003). Progessive brain volume loss during adolescence in childhood-onset schizophrenia. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 160(12). 2181-2189. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.160.12.2181

Thompson, P. M., Vidal, C., Giedd, J. N., Gochman, P., Blumenthal, J., Nicolson, R., … & Rapoport, J. L. (2001). Mapping adolescent brain change reveals dynamic wave of accelerated gray matter loss in very early-onset schizophrenia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(20), 11650-11655. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.201243998

Yildiz, M., Borgwardt, S. J., & Berger, G. E. (2011). Parietal lobes in schizophrenia: do they matter? Schizophrenia Research and Treatment, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1155/2011/581686