Images of an illness: schizophre

• schizophrenia 精神分裂症

Diseases of the mind may appear inscrutable compared with those of the flesh, and schizophrenia epitomises this apparent divergence.

• inscrutable 难以捉摸的；难以理解的；神秘莫测的
• divergence 分歧；发散；【数,物】散度；【生】趋异

Encompassing a spectrum of behaviors and psychoses, schizophrenia has until now been characterized by a dearth of brain volume.

• psychoses 精神病；(由于环境,情况等而引起的)精神上极度的紧张

But research published this week in Brain, a neurology journal, is the first to identify two distinct subtypes of the illness.

Researchers scanned the brains of 307 schizophrenics and used machine learning to cluster individuals based on neuroanatomy alone, irrespective of sex, ethnicity or use of medication.

• neuroanatomy 神经解剖学

Surprisingly, 115 of the patients had normal brain volumes, showing no loss of tissue, and indeed some areas of their brains were slightly enlarged.

The rest exhibited the expected brain damage.

It is too early to know how the two subtypes might differ, but debunking brain-volume loss as general to schizophrenia may help to understand why treatments to treat the condition have proven so frustratingly hit-and-miss.

• debunk 揭穿；揭露；揭露假象
• hit-and-miss 粗制滥造的；时好时坏的

Feb 29th 2020