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| Recommendations | ||||
| Through all of our studies, the hopes and frustrations of neuroimaging for psychiatry were illustrated. Although we continue to see great advances in technology and recent methods shows the greatest promise, the hope that imaging techniques can clearly differentiate depression, dementias, schizophrenia, and other psychopathologic states has not been met. | ||||
| Techniques such as PET and SPECT, which rely on a complex technology in which statistical techniques are used to arrive at an image, may be inherently visually compelling but are very blurry when it comes to identifying specific structure. As pointed out by Brodie (1997), if a map, constructed to show our planet, was arbitrarily based on some cutoff, topographic features that are at least 20,000 feet above sea level, the map would look quite flat with few or no mountain tops. | ||||
| We may still rely more on actual observable brain features on MRI even though our evaluation of a dynamic process pushes us toward these functional techniques with their attendant error. | ||||
| Our method have high lightened impairments of the different brain areas. There have been some suggestions, however, In the light of our findings especially those following treatment , we suggest the following recommendations for better understanding of the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. | ||||
| 1-Further studies using symptom approach and regional brain activity to answer the question of whether disturbance of a specific brain region is confined only to a subgroup of patients. | ||||
| 2-Dynamic SPECT studies using neuropsychological tasks to examine neuropsychological differences between the clusters of schizophrenic syndromes. | ||||
| 3-Since the positive negative distinction continues to dominate the research in schizophrenia, and that negative symptoms are mentioned in relation to the difficulties� encountered in obtaining detailed information about the course of schizophrenic illness prior to the first presentation to medical services, precise assessment of negative symptoms, their onset, cause and prognostic significance adds to our understanding of the disease process. | ||||
| 4- The inadequacy of positive findings may be contributed to short period of assessment following treatment , so a further comparative study for the same group of patients after a longer duration of treatment and after remission of negative symptoms may be of a high value in understanding the response to neuroleptic medications. | ||||