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Neural Mechanisms of Negative Symptoms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2018

Nancy C. Andreasen
Nancy C. Andreasen*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa, USA
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Extract

When Kraepelin originally defined and described dementia praecox, he assumed that it was due to some type of neural mechanism. He hypothesised that abnormalities could occur in a variety of brain regions, including the prefrontal, auditory, and language regions of the cortex. Many members of his department, including Alzheimer and Nissl, were actively involved in the search for the neuropathological lesions that would characterise schizophrenia. Although Kraepelin did not use the term ‘negative symptoms', he describes them comprehensively and states explicitly that he believes the symptoms of schizophrenia can be explained in terms of brain dysfunction:

“If it should be confirmed that the disease attacks by preference the frontal areas of the brain, the central convolutions and central lobes, this distribution would in a certain measure agree with our present views about the site of the psychic mechanisms which are principally injured by the disease. On various grounds, it is easy to believe that the frontal cortex, which is specially well developed in man, stands in closer relation to his higher intellectual abilities, and these are the faculties which in our patients invariably suffer profound loss in contrast to memory and acquired ability.” Kraepelin (1919, p. 219)

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 155 , Issue S7: Negative Symptoms in Schizophrenia , November 1989 , pp. 93 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1989 

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