Explaining Schizophrenia's Slow Onset, Causes, and Potential Avenue for Cure

Studies have linked both stress during pregnancy and fever during pregnancy to risk of schizophrenia for the infant. Many people can attest to having had a high fever at some point in their lives and experiencing horrific dreams and a general sense of foreboding during wakefulness. Clearly, brain temperature has an effect on cognition and the brain is very sensitive to changes in temperature. However, fever is not the only mechanism capable of causing altered mental states or hallucinations. Chemicals known as psychedelics seem to share in common some of the side effects of fever. In fact, when it comes to febrile symptoms and the effects of psycho-active compounds, there is a great deal of functional overlap. Given that not all cases of schizophrenia are drug-induced, this overlap is deserving of further study. I propose that in nearly all cases not caused by psychedelic exposure, a fever during fetal development or early childhood is the probable causative agent.

There are many ways in which normal brain function can be disrupted, fever being one (higher temperature reducing the half-life of certain neurotransmitters while increasing the production of others,) inflammation being another (inflammation inhibits neurons' ability to perform waste elimination functions and to absorb nutrients.) Just as scar tissue is quite different from ordinary tissue in the case of skin cells, for example, when damage is done to the brain through an inflammatory process, the tissue is altered but will frequently retain function, provided that damage is not recurrent. Contrary to the medical literature of the 20th century, brain matter does have the capacity to regenerate itself to varying degrees, but the ability to repair damage and grow new tissue seems to be extremely limited after a certain age.