Science in the news blog 3

Maggie Fisher

October 17, 2013

Science Daily

Schizophrenia linked to abnormal brain waves: Neurological hyperactivity produces disordered thinking

“Schizophrenia patients usually suffer from a breakdown of organized thought, often accompanied by delusions or hallucinations. For the first time, MIT neuroscientists have observed the neural activity that appears to produce this disordered thinking.”

In some Schizophrenia patients mutations in the gene for calcineurin have been found. Scientists wanted to see if the gene Calcineurin really was linked to schizophrenia. To do the experiment, they created mice that lacked the Calcineurin gene.  After they created the mice, they had them run and then rest. The mice that lacked Calcineurin were fine while running but when they stopped the ripple effects were much stronger. These mice could not replay the course they just ran. The effects of the mice that lacked Calcineurin presented similar behavior of schizophrenia. Some of this behavior was impaired short term memory, attention deficits, and abnormal social behavior.

To me, this behavior does not correlate exactly to Schizophrenia. These behavior characteristics also resemble ADHD. We cannot tell if the mice are having hallucinations, which is a key characteristic in Schizophrenia, until we see what they see. After scientists can visually see what the mice see when they lack this gene, then they could prove that Calcineurin is linked to schizophrenia. These behavior patterns seen in the mice in this experiment are just few of the symptoms of schizophrenia and not enough to make this assumption.

Reference: Article Here