Schizophrenia - Neurodevelopmental theory

A number of proposals have been made suggesting that neurodevelopment factors may play a causal role in schizophrenia

Helmut Beckmann
Driven by his pioneering neuropathological findings of early prenatal cytoarchitectural malformations in the brains of patients with schizophrenic psychoses, Helmut Beckmann is one of the fathers of the neurodevelopmental theory of these psychoses.

In 1986 with C. Jakob, he reported on cortical and subcortical developmental disturbances in schizophrenic psychoses, particularly in the entorhinal area.

These cytoarchitectural abnormalities were mainly or exclusively localized in the upper cortical layers of the limbic allocortex, including circumscribed malformations, nerve cell alterations as well as cytoarchitectural deviations attributable to disruptions of neural migration in the second trimester of gestation.