Of schizophrenia, pruning, and epigenetics: a hypothesis and suggestion.

One area of relative agreement in schizophrenic research is that there is grey matter volume deficit in various cortical areas associated with this illness. One theory attempting to explain this involves an exaggerated action of the normal CNS pruning process. Various aspects of this process were discussed along with indirect supporting evidence for this hypothesis. A test of this hypothesis was proposed involving whole genome epigenetic scanning of discordant monozygotic twins to see if differences were present associated with transcription sites of proteins involved in the pruning process.