Schizophrenia Research Trends

PREFACESchizophrenia is a chronic, severe, and disabling psychosis, which is an impairment ofthinking in which the interpretation of reality is abnormal. Psychosis is a symptom of adisordered brain. Approximately 1 percent of the population worldwide developsschizophrenia during their lifetime. Although schizophrenia affects men and women withequal frequency, the disorder often appears earlier in men, usually in the late teens or earlytwenties, than in women, who are generally affected in the twenties to early thirties. Peoplewith schizophrenia often suffer symptoms such as hearing internal voices not heard by others,or believing that other people are reading their minds, controlling their thoughts, or plottingto harm them. The current evidence concerning the causes of schizophrenia is a mosaic. It isquite clear that multiple factors are involved. These include changes in the chemistry of thebrain, changes in the structure of the brain, and genetic factors. Viral infections and headinjuries may also play a role.New molecular tools and modern statistical analyses are allow focusing in on particulargenes that might make people more susceptible to schizophrenia by affecting, for example,brain development or neurotransmitter systems governing brain functioning. State-of-the-artimaging techniques are being used to study the living brain. They have recently revealedspecific, subtle abnormalities in the structure and function of the brains of patients withschizophrenia. In other imaging studies, early biochemical changes that may precede theonset of disease symptoms have been noted, prompting examination of the neural circuits thatare most likely to be involved in producing those symptoms. This book presents new andimportant research in the field.Chapter I – Background: Body image aberration in schizophrenia was earlier conceivedas delusional and hallucinatory symptoms. However, perceptions of schizophrenia havechanged dramatically, especially with the concept of negative symptoms in the 1980s and inthe 1990s, to include the neurocognitive aspects of schizophrenia. Deviations inschizophrenics’ body image from the standard underlying various behaviors or allegationsconcerning the body should be now refocused. In this chapter, using the Body ImageQuestionnaire (BIQ), comprised of three hypothetical components, anatomical, functionaland psychological, attempts were made to resolve some primary questions. They were (1)whether or not there is any related clinical characteristics to schizophrenic body imageabberation, (2) whether there are aberrant components of body image specific to