Role of the prefrontal cortex in the neonatal ventral hippocampus lesion, an animal model of schizophrenia

Abstract

Schizophrenia is a complex mental disorder that starts at early adulthood with a combination of positive and negative symptoms as well as cognitive impairments. It is well known that dendritic spine density and dendritic length of the pyramidal neurons of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) are reduced in the post-mortem tissue of schizophrenia patients. In addition, the volume of the PFC is reduced in this mental disorder. A possible hypothesis for these morphological changes suggests that the disruption between PFC and hippocampus, at an early age is involved in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Furthermore, rats with bilateral lesion of the neonatal ventral hippocampus (nVHL) at an early age is an example of the initial disruption between hippocampus and PFC and also exhibits a reduction in the synaptic connections in the PFC. The present mini-review discusses the neurochemical and morphological changes in the PFC of rats that underwent nVHL, an animal model of schizophrenia.