Schizophrenia Brain Research Project

Schizophrenia is a chronic and severe mental disorder that affects how a person thinks,
feels, and behaves. It is often characterized by thoughts or experiences that seem out of touch
with reality, disorganized speech or behavior, and decreased participation in daily activities.
There is no known cause of schizophrenia. Sometimes it is visible in young children but
often times it is not visible or there until teenage years or later adulthood. A combination of
genetics, environment, altered brain chemistry, and structure may play a role in the cause of
developing schizophrenia. Genetics affects it because sometimes schizophrenia runs in families
but may skip some members or generations randomly. Environmental factors such as exposure to
viruses, malnutrition before birth, problems during birth, and psychosocial factors are likely to be
related to developing schizophrenia. It is also very likely that an imbalance in the cortex or an
imbalance of hormones, especially during puberty, combined with genetic and environmental
factors are often a big reason why some people are schizophrenic. Lastly, drugs like marijuana or
LSD can lead to schizophrenia or schizophrenia-like-behavior if over-used as a teenager.
Treatments for schizophrenia are focused on decreasing symptoms and making life more
tolerable but do not have the ability to make someone’s schizophrenia go away. Antipsychotic
medicine is usually taken daily and psychosocial help is often very needed. Once a patient and
doctor find a medication that helps the patient, it is often recommended to get psychological help
to cope with everyday life and gain management skills. There are also centers for people with
schizophrenia or mental wards in hospitals that they can live at if their schizophrenia is not able
to be managed by their family and friends for whatever reason.
Schizophrenia symptoms include distorted thoughts, hallucinations, and feelings of fright
and paranoia. When someone notices these symptoms in a person and they lose the ability to
control their actions or have uncontrollable “episodes” they are often referred to a doctor or
specialist who can help. People with schizophrenia on average live 12-15 years shorter than their
peers because of symptoms that eventually can lead to death if untreated.
Studies show that certain brain chemicals that control thinking, behavior, and emotions
are either too active or not active enough in people with schizophrenia. Schizophrenic people
also often have less “gray matter” in their brains and lose brain tissue over time. In
schizophrenia, dopamine is tied to hallucinations and delusions. That’s because brain areas that
"run" on dopamine may become overactive. One study found that people who are at risk for
developing schizophrenia may have too much glutamate activity in certain areas of the brain at
first. As the disease progresses, those brain areas may have too little glutamate activity.

The doctors who conducted this experiment were Samantha Slomiak, Dena R. Matalon,
and Lisa Roth. It was conducted in 2017. It is not known where the young boy lived or where
this case study was performed. “Kyle” was a six year old boy who presented with symptoms of
disorganized behavior, hallucinations, and developmental regression. At three months old, he
began tracking objects his parents were unable to see. At seven months old, he began visually
fixating on unseen objects and would “open his eyes widely, become very excited, flap his arms,
and tense his legs,” according to his mother. He did not begin walking until twenty months old
and was referred to early intervention for gross motor delay. When he was three, he began
talking to someone his parents could not see, leading them to believe he had an imaginary friend.
While learning to read at age five, he would say, “Stop mom! The words are talking back!” This
suggests that he has auditory hallucinations. Later on he began to socially withdraw and
appeared like he had paranoid schizophrenia. His family history was significant because a
maternal cousin, two paternal cousins, and his paternal great grandmother had schizophrenia and
two paternal cousins had bipolar disorder. A paternal cousin and a paternal great aunt were also
autistic. His pediatrician performed a preliminary workup, including a routine laboratory
examination and a CT of the head, which all came out normal. Based on the family history, his
notably young age, and the severity of some of his symptoms he was recommended for genetic
testing. They were trying to gather proof as to what causes schizophrenia. The result was he had
a 22q11.2 deletion. Seventy-five percent of individuals with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome are
affected by psychiatric illness, most commonly autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,
anxiety, and psychosis. Twenty-five percent of those people have schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia FRQ
A 17 year old boy named George was presenting with symptoms of schizophrenia. Why or why
not are all of the following terms connected to this diagnosis and illness.
1. CT Scan
2. Cerebral Cortex
3. Plasticity
4. Hormones
5. Dopamine
6. Glutamate
7. Mind-Altering Drugs

CT scans​ are x-rays taken of the brain. They may need to be administered to someone
diagnosed with schizophrenia to figure out what or what doesn’t cause their schizophrenia. The
brain structure and appearance ​may​ be a cause of this illness but a CT scan is needed to
determine that.
The ​cerebral cortex​ is a part of the brain containing gray matter. The reason that this
relates to schizophrenia is because it has been found that on average, people with schizophrenia
have less gray matter in their brains than people without this illness.
Plasticity​ is the ability for the brain to change throughout a lifetime. This relates because
a person may have an abnormal brain causing them to be schizophrenic but it does not appear
until later in their lives insinuating that it is possible for their brain to morph and change over
time. However, this is not the main cause of even a proven cause of schizophrenia as of now.
Hormones​ are substances produced by the body to get certain cells and tissues to begin
performing a certain action. Tons of extra and different hormones are released when someone
goes through puberty and often times these hormones and the aftermath of these hormones after
puberty can be correlated and connected to the development of schizophrenia, seeing as the
disorder is often brought on between the ages of sixteen and twenty.
Dopamine​ is a neurotransmitter in the body that controls motor movements,
hallucinations, and more. An above-average amount of dopamine produced in the body can lead
to schizophrenia and is often found in people with this disorder. The areas of the brain that rely
on dopamine may become overactive because of the increase of dopamine leading to
hallucinations, the biggest symptom of schizophrenia.
Glutamate​ is a neurotransmitter responsible for memory. When someone has
schizophrenia often times they have an excess amount of glutamate when they develop the
disease and as it progresses they have too little glutamate.
Mind-altering drugs​ include such things as weed, cocaine, LSD, ecstacy. They alter a
person’s actions, thoughts, vision, hearing, etc. When a person uses some form of mind-altering
drug regularly and especially when they are used by teenagers with underdeveloped brains, this
causes lifelong damage and can lead to schizophrenia later in life.