Schizophrenia is a chronic psychiatric disorder characterized by psychosis, negative symptoms, cognitive impairment, and functional decline.[1][2] It is not a classical neurodegenerative disease, but it appears across NeuroWiki because many of the implicated systems, including neurotransmission, synaptic organization, and developmental circuit assembly, overlap with mechanisms studied in neurologic disease.[1:1]
Current models of schizophrenia emphasize interacting abnormalities across dopamine, glutamate, GABA, cortical-hippocampal circuitry, and neurodevelopmental risk architecture.[1:2][2:1] Cognitive dysfunction is a major determinant of disability and appears across illness stages.[2:2]
Towards a unified theory of the aetiology of schizophrenia. British Journal of Psychiatry (2024). ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Cognition in schizophrenia across phases of illness: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Schizophrenia Bulletin (2026). ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎