Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Between Bedside and Bench
  • Published:

Puzzling over schizophrenia: Schizophrenia, social environment and the brain

Nature Medicine volume 18, pages 211–213 (2012)Cite this article

Subjects

Bedside to Bench

More than a century after the initial description of schizophrenia as a clinical entity, the need for effective treatments is as pressing as ever. Though schizophrenia is widely recognized as a major cause of the global burden of disease1, affected individuals and clinicians continue to face an often chronic and debilitating condition with a mortality gap of more than 15 years. Although available medications such as dopamine D2 receptor antagonists relieve symptoms of acute psychosis, they have substantial side effects and provide limited relief of cognitive impairments and negative symptoms2, which are critical for quality of life and long-term patient disability. This unsatisfactory state of affairs is partly a consequence of the lack of pathophysiological knowledge—an issue that is largely rooted in the biological complexity of the disorder2,3, but arguably also in some conceptual limitations of the way translation is pursued in psychiatry today, where research tends to be focused on single facets of biology such as receptor class or single genetic variants.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Effects of social environmental risk factors for schizophrenia on regulatory circuits of human social-emotional processing.

Katie Vicari

References

  1. Collins, P.Y. et al. Nature 475, 27–30 (2011).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  2. Insel, T.R. Nature 468, 187–193 (2010).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Meyer-Lindenberg, A. Nature 468, 194–202 (2010).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Weinberger, D.R. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 44, 660–669 (1987).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. van Os, J., Rutten, B.P. & Poulton, R. Schizophr. Bull. 34, 1066–1082 (2008).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  6. Krabbendam, L. & van Os, J. Schizophr. Bull. 31, 795–799 (2005).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Pedersen, C.B. & Mortensen, P.B. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 58, 1039–1046 (2001).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Bourque, F., van der Ven, E. & Malla, A. Psychol. Med. 41, 897–910 (2011).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Zammit, S. et al. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 67, 914–922 (2010).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  10. Lederbogen, F. et al. Nature 474, 498–501 (2011).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  11. Borgwardt, S.J., McGuire, P., Fusar-Poli, P., Radue, E.W. & Riecher-Rossler, A. Neuroimage 39, 553–554 (2008).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  12. Zink, C.F. et al. Neuron 58, 273–283 (2008).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  13. Erk, S. et al. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 67, 803–811 (2010).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  14. Brunelin, J. et al. Psychiatry Res. 181, 130–135 (2010).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  15. Kuhn, T.S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1962).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Heike Tost and Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg are at the Central Institute of Mental Health, University of Heidelberg, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany.,

    Heike Tost & Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg

Authors
  1. Heike Tost
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Tost, H., Meyer-Lindenberg, A. Puzzling over schizophrenia: Schizophrenia, social environment and the brain. Nat Med 18, 211–213 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.2671

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.2671

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing