Brain abnormality indicates general risk for mental illness. A new study reports an abnormality in visual regions of the brain that is associated with a person's general risk for mental illness. The findings indicate a signature abnormality shared between common forms of mental illness, which could help clinicians assess a patient's general risk for developing a mental illness. Source 2x.
Evolutionary changes in the human brain may have led to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The same aspects of relatively recent evolutionary changes that make us prone to bad backs and impacted third molars may have generated long, noncoding stretches of DNA that predispose individuals to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other neuropsychiatric diseases. A study identifies an unusually lengthy array of tandem repeats found only within the human version of a gene governing calcium transport in the brain. Source 3u.