Schizophrenia on MRI Brain Scans

There are many reports of clinical and biological gender differences in schizophrenia. Gender differences in structural brain abnormalities in schizophrenia have been reported on both computed tomographic (CT) and magnetic resonance imag-ing (MRI) scans. We present here a new MRI study of cerebral struc-tures in schizophrenia. On the basis of previous findings, we hypothe-sized that schizophrenic males are more likely than females to show smaller brains and larger ventricles compared to their control counter-parts. Our results indicated that the opposite was true: schizophrenic females, but not schizophrenic males, had smaller craniums and brains and larger lateral and third ventricles on MRI scans. The possi-ble significance and implications of these data are discussed. Many gender differences have been reported in schizophrenia, such as premorbid history, age of onset, symptomatology, response to treat-ment, and course of illness (Lewin