The brain cells are called inhibitory neurons and they are part of the brain’s memory center. This part of the brain remains a poorly understood region.
The finding tallies with previous investigations that suggest schizophrenia, which affects about one in every 100 people, originates in part in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is the region of the brain that controls memory and spatial navigation. One region of the hippocampus of recent interest is CA2. This is because post-mortem examinations of patients with schizophrenia shows a decrease in the number of CA2 inhibitory neurons.
To investigate this further, researchers performed a series of electrophysiological and behavioral experiments on mice. The mice were modified to have fewer inhibitory neurons in the CA2 region. Here they found that social memory was significantly reduced in the modified mice, and the mice behaved in ways that could be paralleled with schizophrenia. Further research is required, although the research today has indicated an interesting line of inquiry.
The research was a collaboration between Columbia University’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC), and the Université Paris Descartes. The research has been reported to the journal Neuron, in a study titled “Age-Dependent Specific Changes in Area CA2 of the Hippocampus and Social Memory Deficit in a Mouse Model of the 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome.”
