Brain Changes In Adults And Adults Essay

The prevalence of schizophrenia is thought to be about 1% of the population around the world. The disorder is considered to be one of the top ten causes of long-term disability worldwide. Late adolescence and early adulthood are periods for the onset of schizophrenia. In 40% of men and 23% of women diagnosed with schizophrenia, the condition manifested before the age of 19 (Addington, Cadenhead, Cannon, 2007).These are critical years in a young adult’s social and vocational development.

When one compares the structure of the adult brain and the teenage brain, there will be several differences between the two. Adults have stronger connections from one nerve cell to another, and they all have essential communication skills. However, teenagers have more synapses and have weaker nerve connections. Also, their frontal lobes aren 't fully developed. This causes adolescence to have impulsive behavior and they typically do not recognize consequences in a situation. In the early twenties the brain becomes fully developed, so people are very good at making decision and they are able to think abstractly. There are many factors that contribute to the construction of the brain; some things help the brain develop normally, other things interrupt the process. There is a substantial amount of distinctions between the adult brain and the adolescent brain, and these includes behavioral and structural differences.

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder. It is also quite a complex illness that affects daily functioning of those who suffer from it. Professionals across several fields who treat schizophrenics do not share a consensus regarding the cause of schizophrenia, though there are a few theories regarding potential and definitive causes. The on-set of schizophrenia often takes place in adolescence and adulthood, but there are cases when there is childhood on-set schizophrenia. Schizophrenia in children will be the focus of this paper. Children who show signs of schizophrenia may begin doing so at around age five.

Schizophrenia is a brain disease. Many studies have been conducted regarding the brain localization of schizophrenia. One study established that schizophrenia is characterized by significant loss in the grey matter of the brain. The loss was detected to be up to 25% in some areas and the damage was seen to begin at the parietal (outer) regions of the brain then spreading to the rest of the regions of the brain over a period of about five years ADDIN EN.CITE Rajagopalan1998923(Rajagopalan, MacBeth, & Varma, 1998)92392317Rajagopalan, MMacBeth, RVarma, SLXXY chromosome anomaly and schizophreniaAmerican Journal Medical GeneticsAmerican Journal Medical Genetics64-65811998( HYPERLINK l "_ENREF_9" o "Rajagopalan, 1998 #923" Rajagopalan, MacBeth, & Varma, 1998). Another study showed that patients who had the worst loss of brain tissue also exhibited the worst symptoms of schizophrenia such as hallucinations, psychotic and bizarre thoughts, hearing voices, depression and delusion ADDIN EN.CITE Conklin2002797(Conklin & Iacono, 2002)79779717Conklin, Heather M.Iacono, William G.Schizophrenia: A Neurodevelopmental PerspectiveCurrent Directions in Psychological ScienceCurrent Directions in Psychological Science33-371112002Sage Publications, Inc. on behalf of Association for Psychological Science09637214http://www.jstor.org/stable/20182759( HYPERLINK l "_ENREF_2" o "Conklin, 2002 #797" Conklin & Iacono, 2002).

(2016) ran into trouble due to issues of skewness. Thus, the ventricular cerebrospinal fluid had to be transformed using a natural log. This was done so that researchers could approximate a Gaussian distribution. By doing so they found a main effect for diagnosis and an increase in volume for patients suffering from schizophrenia. A significant interaction between diagnosis and violence was also found. NVS and VS patients had an increase in volume compared to HC and there was an increase volume in comparison between NVS to NPV. When it came to the role of negative symptoms and medication, it was only limited to patients who suffered with schizophrenia. This data was used to investigate the possible role of several factors including illness duration on gray matter volume loss. No group difference was found. Researchers also found no correlation between CPZ equivalent and WBV, ventricular cerebral spinal fluid, left amygdala, left hippocampus, left thalamus, right amygdala, right hippocampus, or right thalamus volumes. Schizophrenic groups were found to differ in age, academic achievement, substance use and negative

The occurrence of symptoms of psychosis before twelve years old is scarce, less than one-sixtieth, but studying these situations are important for comprehension of this disorder. Most children with schizophrenia show delays in language and other functions before their psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, and disordered thinking materialize. In the first years of life, about thirty percent of young children have short-lived symptoms of extensive developmental disorder, such as rocking, posturing, and arm flapping. Childhood-onset of psychosis may present with poor motor

Schizophrenia can be a crippling disorder, and only in the last several decades have scientist labeled it as a brain disorder. Scientists have also been researching to try and determine if schizophrenia starts in the womb. There are several factors that give evidence that schizophrenia is a brain disorder, including: enlarged ventricles in the brain, increases in the size of sulci, and decreases in some different lobes of the brain. There is also some evidence that schizophrenia starts in the womb based on the increase of its likeness, the more similar different genomes are.

Childhood schizophrenia makes the child lose touch with reality (psychosis). When the child loses psychosis he or she may have one or all of the following signs and symptoms of

In the article, Accelerated Brain Aging in Schizophrenia: A Longitudinal Pattern Recognition Study1 published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, the authors decided to investigate the characteristic progressive brain loss that occurs in schizophrenia patients. In particular, they are testing the idea that this progressive brain loss is the result of the brain aging more rapidly in individuals affected by schizophrenia than in unaffected individuals. Schizophrenia is a very rare disease that manifest in several different ways and in different severities. Schizophrenia is often associated with symptoms such as paranoia, hallucinations, delusions, and disorganization in behavior and thinking. The cause of schizophrenia is not known

Biological theorists believe that individuals may have a genetic predisposition for the schizophrenia if a close family member has been diagnosed with the disorder. Stress during adolescent years seems to provoke the disorder among individuals who have a family history of the disorder. In addition, this theory suggests biochemical abnormalities related to the dopamine neurotransmitters may also contribute to the illness as the brains neurotransmission of the dopamine is too frequent in occurrence (Comer, 2005). CAT and MRI scans have also indicated that abnormal brain structuring may also play a role in the development of schizophrenia due to a common occurrence of enlarged ventricles within schizophrenia sufferers (Comer, 2005). Various parts of the brain may not develop for function properly which seems lead to Type II schizophrenia. Studies have also pointed towards the idea that exposure to certain viruses before birth may lead to the eventual development of schizophrenia (Comer, 2005).

Schizophrenia is a mental illness which affects millions of people throughout the world. Scientists have begun to understand more and more about the possible causes, predisposing factors, types, and possible treatments for schizophrenia. (Torrey, 1995) It is very rare for schizophrenic symptoms to appear before the age of 12 but it does occur. Recently, there has been a growing interest in childhood schizophrenia. It is less than one-sixtieth as common as the adult-onset type but the characteristics are very similar. Childhood schizophrenia also tends to be harder to treat and to have a worse prognosis than the adult-onset form. (Rapoport, 1997)

Most of us may ask our self, what ages does schizophrenia start to develop and who get this disorder? Well most of who get them are the man than women’s. Faustman suggests, “that even that may represent the risk factor for schizophrenia occurs in life or even before birth”. The essence of faustman’s argument is that some children may have already developed schizophrenia before he/she was born. Schizophrenia occurs in all national groups around the world. According to the national institute of mental health, “Symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions usually start between 16 and 30. Males tend to experience symptoms a little earlier than females”. In other words, most suffer from schizophrenia occurs in late adolescence and early adulthood.

Thanks to new technologies we have been able to discover new findings to help us better understand schizophrenia. One consistent finding was that people who are at risk for schizophrenia because of family history seem to show abnormal activity in the prefrontal cortex. This cortex connects to other regions that are involved with emotion, cognition, and motor movement. Thus, its logical that someone with a small or inactive prefrontal cortex could manifest some of the symptoms involved with schizophrenia like deficits in social/emotional interactions, cognition, and their ability to carry out tasks. (Lawrie et al.,2008). According to Lawrie, some people with schizophrenia also show enlargement of ventricles in the brain. This suggests that there is atrophy or deterioration in other brain tissues. What stood out to me was that schizophrenics with enlarged ventricles begin to show emotional, social, and behavioral deficits long before they even develop some of the core symptoms of the disorder. According to same study, they also seemed to have more severe symptoms, and reacted less to medication. It’s engaging how neuroanatomical abnormalities are involved with this particular disorder. Researchers say that this is due to genetic and epigenetic factors. For example they believe birth complications, and prenatal viral infection are linked to

Schizophrenia is defined as, “a severe mental disorder in which people interpret reality abnormally. Schizophrenia may result in some combination of hallucinations, delusions, and extremely disordered thinking and behavior that impairs daily functioning, and can be disabling” (Mayo Clinic, para. 1, 2016). ). COS is the diagnosis for children under the age of thirteen and EOS is the diagnosis for adolescents by the age of nineteen (Chen, Rittner, Manning, & Crofford, 2015). Children and adolescents experience positive and/or negative symptoms (Barlett, 2014). For instance, the positive symptoms of COS include hallucinations, delusions, impaired cognitive abilities, disorganized speech and abnormal motor behavior (Barlett, 2014; American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Coghill, Bonnar, Duke, Graham, & Seth, 2009). Negative symptoms include flat affect, lack of motivation, withdrawal, lack of emotion, depression, and anhedonia (Barlett, 2014; American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Coghill, Bonnar, Duke, Graham, & Seth, 2009).

These early studies suggested that schizophrenia occurred due to a disruption to brain development in the womb which caused a developmental problem which manifests as schizophrenia when the person became an adult (Weinberger, 1987).