A team of Columbia scientists has found that disruptions to the brain’s center for spatial navigation — its internal GPS — result in some of the severe memory deficits seen in schizophrenia. The new study in mouse models of the disorder marks the first time that schizophrenia’s effects have been observed in the behavior of living animals — and at the level of individual brain cells — with such high-resolution, precision and clarity. The findings offer a promising entry point for attacking a near-universal and debilitating symptom of schizophrenia, memory deficits, which has thus far withstood all forms of treatment.
The results of this study were published in Nature Neuroscience.
