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Written By: Editorial Team | Published : November 10, 2018 1:22 PM IST
Schizophrenia can be predicted by this brain pattern. ©Shutterstock
Schizophrenia may cause hallucinations, delusions, and extremely disordered thinking and behaviour which impairs daily functioning and can be disabling. A range of problems with thinking (cognition), behaviour or emotions are involved in schizophrenia. One may get delusions, loss of interest in daily chores and so on.'
A pattern of brain activity which predicts the development of schizophrenia and an advance that could be used to diagnose the disorder earlier has been identified by the scientists. Patients can experience milder symptoms such as disordered thinking before the patients experience a psychotic episode along with sudden changes in behaviour and a loss of touch with reality.
This kind of thinking can cause behaviour such as jumping from topic to topic at random or giving answers which are not related to the original question. Reportedly, previous studies have shown that about 25 per cent of people who experience these early symptoms may develop schizophrenia. 158 people between the ages of 13 and 34 who were identified as high-risk because they had experienced early symptoms, were followed by the researchers.
Reportedly, 93 control subjects, who did not have any risk factors, were included by the team. The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure a type of brain activity involving resting state networks, at the beginning of the study. 23 of the high-risk patients had experienced a psychotic episode and were diagnosed with schizophrenia, one year after the initial scans. The researchers found a unique pattern of activity which was dissimilar from the healthy control subjects and the at-risk ones who had not yet developed psychosis.
