Study: Young Adulthood Window Best To Treat Schizophrenia

In New Delhi: A recent study suggests that long-lasting treatment for neuropsychiatric illnesses including schizophrenia and autism may include targeting and stimulating dopamine system neurons that are underactive and raising their activity in young adults.

Researchers from the University of Rochester in the US discovered that stimulating the dopamine-supplying neuron cells in the frontal cortex of mice improved the circuit and corrected structural flaws in the brain that result in long-term symptoms.

The research team had discovered that this particular dopamine system arm was flexible in teenagers but not in adults in earlier experiments.

In this work, which was published in the journal eLife, they took use of this system’s window of plasticity as a chance for therapeutic intervention, the results of which could have an impact on the brain’s circuitry well into adulthood.

Dysfunction of the dopamine system, which is crucial for higher cognitive processing and decision-making, has been discovered to frequently start in young adulthood.

“Brain development is a lengthy process, and many neuronal systems have critical windows – key times when brain areas are malleable and undergoing final maturation steps,” said Rianne Stowell, a postdoctoral fellow in the Wang Lab at the University of Rochester Medical Center and co-first author on the research.

“By identifying these windows, we can target interventions to these time periods and possibly change the course of a disease by rescuing the structural and behavioral deficits caused by these disorders,” said Stowell.

“If we can target the right windows in development and understand the signals at play, we can develop treatments that change the course of these brain disorders,” said Stowell.

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