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Reflections from half a century of progress searching for the causes of schizophrenia: Stanley Dean award
1Professor of Psychiatry, Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA, United States.
Abstract:
Over the past century, psychiatric research has undergone a profound transformation, driven largely by advances in the tools used to explore the underlying causes of serious diseases of the brain, including mental illnesses. Initially any brain disease could only be diagnosed at autopsy and researched by studies done postmortem. However, once pneumencephalography was developed, primitive views of brain atrophy by today's standards were available, only to become obsolete when Computed Tomography(CT), and then Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) were developed. Similarly, the study of heredity began with epidemiological family research, but the introduction of polymorphic markers for mapping gene locations on chromosomes transformed the field of genetics, leading to the discovery of genetic causes for many disorders. Looking ahead, emerging novel technologies promise to unlock an even deeper understanding of human thought processes, potentially in ways we can scarcely imagine today.
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