The idea that schizophrenia is caused by brain dysfunction resulting from excessive synaptic pruning during the teenage years is certainly nothing new, I’ve been aware of it for many years and I think it is a winner, but the idea that this excessive pruning is triggered by higher than normal levels of complement appears to be new, although quite predictable in light of my immune hypothesis of synaesthesia which I published at this blog way back in 2012, even though, to be fair, at the time I was contrasting a variety of dementia (PCA or Benson’s syndrome) with synaesthesia, not schizophrenia. It is possibly worth noting though that schizophrenia was originally known as “dementia praecox” and might not be an entirely different thing to Bensons dementia in reality. I’ve written it before and I’ll repreat it again; I believe that Benson’s syndrome could be caused by excessive levels of complement, specifically C3 but I could be wrong in that specific suggestion. Regardless of the importance of the differences between Benson’s and schizophrenia, I’d still argue that this exciting theory about schizophrenia and high complement and over-pruning that is apparently supported by evidence is such a mirror-image of my theory about synaesthesia and low complement and under-pruning from 2012 that my theory could have been an influence on the schizophrenia researchers whose work has just been published in Nature, but I doubt that I got any credit.
It is exciting that progress is possibly being made into understanding and maybe even preventing schizophrenia, and it is about bloody time, (and how hard could it be to hinder the action of C4 or get rid of some of it, for heaven’s sake, to save some poor wretch’s brain and mind?) but now I’m left wondering what, if any, is the relationship between Benson’s syndrome and schizophrenia? My limited knowledge of Benson’s identifies only memory problems as a common feature of the two brain disorders, (and isn’t it interesting that I and more conventional synaesthesia researchers have linked synaesthesia with superiority in memory?) but I’m wondering if there is more in common between Sz and Benson’s than memory issues. I guess if I was really interested I’d turn to Google and PubMed to check whether someone has done a study of the immune system genetics of people who have Benson’s, but I have so many other less interesting things to do today. If no one has done such a study, then maybe they should, and then thank me for the tip.
Wilson, Clare Overactive brain pruning in teens could cause schizophrenia. New Scientist. January 27th 2016.
Aswin Sekar, Allison R. Bialas, Heather de Rivera, Avery Davis, Timothy R. Hammond et al. Schizophrenia risk from complex variation of complement component 4. Nature. January 27th 2016.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature16549.html
C. Wright Is synaesthesia caused by low levels of complement? Is Benson’s syndrome (PCA) caused by too much complement C3? Could synesthesia and posterior cortical atrophy be considered in some way opposites? Am I a super=recognizer? June 7, 2012.
Am I a super-recognizer? 