Recovery Michigan

Mostly interesting because there were efforts to retrain people who had damage to areas in the corpus callosum from brain injury not related to schizophrenia in the 60's and 70's. The approaches were cognitive retraining to improve use of both hemispheres in problem solving...

The tests conducted on the schizophrenic subjects revealed that they had various abnormalities in certain parts of their corpus callosum, a bundle of neural fibers that connects the right and left cerebral hemispheres and is considered essential for effective interhemispheric communication.

As Igor Zwir points out: "The current study provides further evidence that schizophrenia is a heterogeneous group of disorders (DUH!), as opposed to a single illness, as was previously thought to be case."

The researchers believe that, in the future, analyzing how specific gene networks are linked to specific brain features and individual symptoms, will be of fundamental importance and will help to ensure that treatments are adapted effectively to each patient's specific disorder. Currently, treatments for schizophrenia tend to be generic, regardless of the symptoms exhibited by each individual patient.

In order to conduct the analysis of both the gene groups and brain scans, the researchers developed a new, complex analysis of the relationships between different types of data and recommendations concerning new data. The system is similar to that used by companies such as Netflix in order to determine the films they wish to broadcast.

Professor Zwir explains: "To conduct the research, we did not begin by studying individuals who had certain schizophrenic symptoms in order to determine whether they had the corresponding brain anomalies. Instead, we first analyzed the data, and that's how we discovered these patterns. This type of information, combined with data on the genetics of schizophrenia, will someday be of vital importance in helping doctors treat the disorders in a more precise and effective way."