Is schizophrenia the price of human central nervous system complexity?

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to determine if there is evidence to support the hypothesis that schizophrenia is a human-specific disorder associated with the need for highly complex central nervous system (CNS) development. A review was therefore undertaken of published literature relevant to the identification of human-specific CNS development. There was no clear evidence found at the macroscopic, microscopic or molecular level that suggests unique changes have occurred in the evolution of the human CNS. Rather, highly significant changes in the size of the frontal lobe, increases in numbers of specific cell types, changes in gene expression and changes in genome sequence all seem to..