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Featured Review
Cellscience Reviews Vol 5 No 1
ISSN 1742-8130 |
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Prefrontal GABA deficits in schizophrenia: interneuron pathology and network dysfunction
Christopher Pittenger 1, Flora M. Vaccarino 2 & John H. Krystal 1
1 Department of Psychiatry & 2 Child Study Center, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
Received 23rd July © Cellscience 2008
Accumulating evidence implicates abnormalities in GABAergic interneuron function in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Postmortem studies of patients with schizophrenia have begun to identify specific structural abnormalities in defined subpopulations of interneurons in the prefrontal cortex. We briefly review the different subpopulations of cortical interneuron and how they may contribute to the coordination of neuronal firing in cortical microcircuits. We then summarize neuropathological and other data implicating specific subpopulations - especially the parvalbumin-expressing chandelier cells - in the abnormalities of the schizophrenic cortex. Finally, and more speculatively, we discuss how dysfunction of these interneurons may contribute to cortical dysfunction and to the phenomenology of schizophrenia.
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