Schizophrenia

Abstract

Schizophrenia is a mental illness found around the world, usually afflicting around 1% of the population. Far beyond what this moderate prevalence figure would suggest, schizophrenia has stimulated a tremendous amount of neuroscience research. For one, this is due to a very large unmet need: Schizophrenia is often quite disabling to the people suffering from it and imposes an enormous burden to patients, caregivers, and the medical system. In the World Health Organization (WHO) survey, schizophrenia ranks among the top ten illnesses contributing to the global burden of disease, as well as to years of life lost to disability. Secondly, schizophrenia is of interest to many researchers because it may profoundly disrupt many of the most complex neurocognitive functions of which the human brain is capable. People with schizophrenia exhibit symptoms, such as hallucinations, delusions, or the feeling of being controlled from the outside, that may strike at the core of a person's identity and relationship to the world. Consequently, neuroscientists interested in complex human cognition have tended to be interested in the disturbances of human cognition found at schizophrenia. In the end, however, it is important not to forget that as fascinating as these surface features of the illness may be, the ultimate goal must be to develop improved treatments for this devastating illness that will allow an even greater proportion of suffers to live independent and fully integrated lives in the community.