Under the umbrella of Autism spectrum disorders, the term “Asperger’s syndrome” has been used since the mid-20th century to diagnose individuals who are considered to be “less impacted” by symptoms related to autism, such as developmental and social deficits. “Asperger’s” was coined in reference to Hans Asperger, making it an eponym—a term coined as a means of accrediting an individual for some significant contribution or purpose. Hans Asperger was a physician who has been historically noted as one of the first to describe autism as a disorder. Most of Asperger’s work focused on children that exhibited social and behavioral impairments in Vienna during the Nazi regime, a time in which he worked with children that exhibited social and behavioral impairments, or lacked gemüt. Though Hans Asperger was never formally a member of the Nazi party, it has come to light that he worked closely with those who were a part of the Nazi regime and played a role in sending “gemütless” children to concentration camps. Given the unethical practices once employed by Asperger and other historically prominent scientists, researchers at Penn State Abington have created a petition calling for the contextualization and removal of the Asperger’s eponym.
Brain Area Abnormalities in Patients with Treatment-Resistant Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a neurological disorder that has been studied for decades, but we still have yet to fully understand its causes and treatment routes. There exists a subset of patients that are considered to have treatment-resistant schizophrenia, meaning they are unresponsive to the conventional methods of treatment such as clozapine and other first-line antipsychotic medications. Recent research has revealed that there are distinct differences in volume of certain brain structures in schizophrenia patients when compared to healthy controls, which may help to reveal why some patients are responsive to drug treatment and some are not. A decrease in brain structure volume or mass may certainly have an effect upon the effectiveness of a medication, especially one that is designed to target the area that is underdeveloped or damaged. However, there is much research that must be done in order to pinpoint the relationship between neural volume and drug responsiveness. The present qualitative literature review is intended to explore and summarize several more recent studies on treatment-resistant schizophrenia and brain volume.