Neuroplasticity and Antipsychotics in Treatment of Schizophrenia

Abstract

Hippocampal neuroplasticity is dependent on neurotropins as nerve growth factor (NGF) and BDNF to help maintenance of memory and cognitive functions in elderly. Meanwhile, a marked hyperplasia of the striatum is found to be associated with changes in the morphology and the number of synapses, mainly of the glutamatergic type. The above findings support the assumption that SGAs also improve neuroplasticity in brain regions whose damage is responsible for the pathogenesis of schizophrenia such as the prefrontal and limbic areas. There is strong evidence that SGAs increase the neuronal growth factor “neurotropin-3” in the cortex of people with schizophrenia. This increase would help neuroplasticity with improvement of mental functions in such patients. The results of these human studies open the way in front of many researchers in this field to do long-term studies with various SGAs to study the possible beneficial regional neuroplasticity-induced by these drugs.