The Basic Pathology of Schizophrenia*

Perceptual closure in schizophrenia.

“…In a brain where the potential for mobilizing such forces does not exist or is reduced, the degree of perceptual closure should be proportionately lowered. Thus, the finding of a "closure deficit" in schizophrenic subjects would be compatible with theories of schizophrenia which hold a deficit in the function of energizing or arousing systems in the brain to be responsible for the illness (Altschule, Promisel, Parkhurst, & Gruenbaum, 1950;Bychowski, 1943;Meadow & Funkenstein, 1952;Nielsen, 1948). Such systems might include the so-called reticular activating or limbic systems.…”

Studies of brain dysfunction in schizophrenia.

“…It is interesting that the defect is suspected to be somewhere on the input side of the nervous system, for Bateman and Papez (7) also suggest a distortion on the input side, resulting from cell disease in the thalamus. Also, according to Nielsen (56), there is a kind of schizophrenia that is based on a diencephalic lesion of a specific nature. He believes that the disease may eventually reach the cortex late in the process, and proposes that the defect is probably inborn, producing a disorganization of neuronal patterns.…”

Brain Studies: I. Central Cerebral Chemicals and Their Relation to Psychoses.

“…Apart from the milky meninges, as Virchow discovered, few clearcut correlations between lesion and psychosis have been proposed, although Salmon (22) suggested, in 1932, that schizophrenia was a diencephalic disease, and similar hypotheses were advanced later by Nielson (20) and Major (15). The suggestion of biochemical aspects of behavior is supported first by the close proximity of the spaces of the cerebrospinal fluid to the regions which are implicated; and secondly, by the accentuation of the bulbocapnine catatonia by a lesion in the rostral tegmentum, as observed by Ingram and Ranson.…”