Abstract
The neurodevelopmental hypothesis of schizophrenia is one of the dominant paradigms for neuropsychiatric research. Moreover, recent genetic studies have suggested a pathological overlap between schizophrenia and other neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autistic spectrum disorders and intellectual disability. These findings indicate the neurodevelopmental aspects of neuropsychiatric disorders and highlight the importance of basic studies of neurodevelopment. Here, the author presents a series of studies that were performed to clarify the pathophysiology of neuropsychiatric disorders. In these studies, we focused on neuronal migration as a fundamental step of brain development. Genetic and environmental factors that are presumed to cause neuropsychiatric disorders were shown to produce deficits of neuronal migration and abnormal cytological architecture in the neocortex of the brain. Abnormal cytological architecture has been pointed out as one of the microscopic pathological findings in the brains of patients with neuropsychiatric disorders. Further studies are required to reveal how abnormal cytological architecture contributes to the pathophysiology of neuropsychiatric disorders.
