MIND & BRAIN: SCHIZOPHRENIA AND
DEPRESSION
For several decades now, scientists and psychologists have been trying to link the mind and the
brain. A sophisticated picture is emerging that conceptualizes mental illnesses as disorders of
mind arising in the brain. There have been several researches done on mental illnesses in recent
years, supported by conceptual and technological developments in cognitive neuroscience.
Several of these researches have been on schizophrenia, depression, and hallucinations. The
article in which I will be critiquing will be: Andreasen, N.C. (1997). Linking mind and brain in the
study of mental illnesses: A project for a scientific psychopathology. Science, 275 1586-1593.
There wasn't actually a study done in this article but there were results from other researches
done on people with schizophrenia and depression and also on normals. The investigators of
those researches were not named. The topic of interest was well measured. Detail and
explanation was excellent. Pictures of the human brain (frontal cortex) are shown to explain the
activity of the brain and the links between the brain and activity. The human brain was the subject
of study. A systematic study of hallucinations showed the activity in the brain. It was
hypothesized that hallucinations are due to an erroneous attribution of the person's own inner
speech to another person, reflecting a defect in self-monitoring. Studies found that the
supplementary motor area and the left superior and middle temporal regions were affected.
Hallucinations are not caused by only one factor, there are several factors involved. Working
memory or the ability to hold a representation and perform cognitive operations using it, allows
people to respond in a flexible manner, to form and modify plans, and to base behavior on
internally held ideas and thoughts rather than being driven by external stimuli. It was said that a
defect in this ability can explain a variety of symptoms of schizophrenia.