Schizophrenic Brain Cells Research

The skin cells taken from four people that have schizophrenia were turned into neurons and grown in lab dishes. this is the first time a complex mental disorder has been examined using brain cells. The cells grown in labs show way fewer connections to each other than do healthy cells, meaning that schizophrenic cells are anti-social, which is a trait of schizophrenia.

This research will assist Scientists in determining the causes and coming up with a treatment for a mental disease that effects 1 percent of the world’s population.

“What’s so exciting about this approach is that we can examine patient-derived neurons that are perhaps equivalent to a particular patient’s own neural cells,” said researcher Gong Chen, an associate professor of biology at Penn State.

“The patient can be his or her own guinea pig for the design of his or her own treatment, without having to be experimented on directly,” Chen added.

Enter your email address: Delivered by FeedBurner