05 February 2015

Schizophrenia, OCD and Autism May Have Related Neurological Causes

A new open access preprint at bioRxiv suggests that schizophrenia, OCD and autism "have the same neurobiological origin, stemming from a common root of a unique neurodevelopmental tree."  This common structure can be described in terms of a "damage network" (i.e. "a connecting link between the damaged areas that relates areas constantly involved in the disorder").
Three main findings emerged from our meta-analysis: 1) The three psychiatric spectra do not appear to have their own specific damage. 2) It is possible to define two new damage clusters. The first includes substantial parts of the salience network, and the second is more closely linked to the auditory-visual, auditory and visual somatic areas. 3) It is possible to define a "Damage Network" and to infer a hierarchy of brain substrates in the pattern of propagation of the damage. These results suggest the presence of a common pattern of damage in the three pathologies plus a series of variable alterations that, rather than support the sub-division into three spectra, highlight a two-cluster parcellation with an input-output and more cognitive clusters.

2 comments:

Nicole.lascurain@healthline.com said...

Hi Andrew,

First off, I came across your site and wanted to say thanks for providing a great OCD resource to the community.

I thought you might find this infographic interesting, as it shows detailed information about the social signs of OCD to look for, and has proved to be a great hit with our readers: http://www.healthline.com/health/ocd/social-signs

Naturally, I’d be delighted if you share this embeddable graphic on http://washparkprophet.blogspot.com/2015/02/schizophrenia-ocd-and-autism-may-have.html , and/or share it with your followers on social. Either way, keep up the great work Andrew!


All the best,

Nicole Lascurain | Assistant Marketing Manager
p: 415-281-3100 | e: nicole.lascurain@healthline.com

Healthline
660 Third Street, San Francisco, CA 94107
www.healthline.com | @Healthline

andrew said...

Reluctantly not deleting this spammy comment because the link is relevant and decent.