Behavioral and neuroimaging studies on schizophrenia in Japan

Chronic methamphetamine psychotics became a major problem in Japan after World War II. On one hand, the clinical symptoms of chronic methamphetamine psychotics were noted to resemble those of schizophrenics quite closely but, on the other hand, their respective personality profiles appeared to differ. Recent research on exploratory eye movements has also shown such similarities and differences. In long-term remitted chronic methamphetamine psychotics, extremely small doses of drugs, or stress, can be enough to cause a recurrence of symptoms. This phenomenon resembles the recurrence of schizophrenia, and animal experiments and basic research are being actively conducted in order to elucidate the mechanism involved. Some 20 years ago, unique studies were conducted that objectively looked at the characteristic behavior of severe chronic schizophrenics in a playground situation. Exploratory eye movements can also be regarded as a kind of behavior and, in this paper, eye movement patterns made in response to a maze test are discussed. In addition, much research on brain imaging in schizophrenia is being conducted in Japan and several interesting studies have also been chosen by the authors for presentation in this paper.