To the Editor.—
Hypotheses, theories, and data piled up as steadily as the record fall of snow in Davos, Switzerland as 129 psychiatrists and neuroscientists from 16 European countries and the United States met in early February 1984 to compare concepts and data at the proliferating edge of research in schizophrenia. However, the origins, pathology, and essential determinants of the course and transmission of schizophrenia remained as murky as the weather.Among a wealth of new data, several contributions seemed particularly significant. Dr Bernard Bogerts (Düsseldorf, West Germany), working with the well-known Vogt collection of serial brain sections collected before the neuroleptic era, expanded his earlier reports on volumetric measures of the subcortical nuclei in whole-brain serial sections from schizophrenic and control subjects. He demonstrated significant reductions in the volumes of the hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, amygdala, the inner segment of the globus pallidus, and the periventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus