Toward a Neuroethology of Schizophrenia: Findings from the Crimean Project

Abstract

Many authors emphasise the importance of the inclusion of ethological data in diagnostics and differential diagnostics of schizophrenia, depression and phobias, estimates of therapy efficiency and evolutionary interpretations. It is important to reformulate the clinical phenomenology of mental disorders in ethological terms to considerably increase the validity of clinical supervision and diagnostics of mental disorders. However, actual studies of mental disorders by ethological methods have met with significant difficulties. This chapter based on findings from the Crimean Neuroethology Project. In the framework of this project the behaviour of patients with schizophrenia was described using ethological methods, including non-experimental observation of elements of facial expression, posture, gesture, manipulation, behaviour patterns and communication with doctors and relatives. Comparative evolutionary research on primate and human behaviour is discussed. Studies have shown that schizophrenia is associated with the relative independence of evolutionarily archaic brain structures and newer ones. Our preliminary data indicate that the patterns and ethological structure of behaviour, as part of the schizophrenia phenotype, can include elements of the endophenotype and are an essential element in describing schizophrenia.