정신분열증과 대뇌 비대칭

Schizophrenia and Cerebral Laterality

Until recently, many investigators have studied on cerebral laterality and psychiatric illness. It was already reported that normal right-handed individuals often show neuroanatomical asymmetries of the brain on computerized tomography scan, with wider right frontal and left occipital lobes. There fore, the authors attempted to know of the pattern of cerebral asymmetries in schizophrenics and controls through computerized tomography on the notice that many investigators had attempted to classify schizophrenia by neuroanatomical findings of the brain. We examined the frequency of reversals of normal asymmetries, in one group of 30 right-handed schizophrenics and the other group of 30 righthanded control subjects. Statistics were done by the Chi square method. Compared to 30 right-handed control group, the schizophrenic group had an significantly increased frequency of frontal and occipital reversals. This result suggests th a t reversals of neuroanatomical asymmetries, and by implication abnormalities of lateralization, are relevant to some schizo-phrenics. But larger samples are considered to be needed for further evaluation