ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Computed Tomography and the Schizophrenic Brain, 1970s-1990s

• In Event: Schizophrenia, Standardization, and Scientific Practices: Clinical Research in the Twentieth Century

English Abstract

The finding of cerebral ventricular enlargement in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia is one of the most replicated findings of late-twentieth century biological psychiatry, but its scientific and historical significance remain under-examined. This paper draws on extensive archival materials from the UK Medical Research Council and several oral history interviews to examine how this finding emerged first in a clinical research centre in north-west London before spreading around the world. Key to the emergence of this finding were the new CT scanners, first made in Britain in the 1970s. The use of these new medical devices in clinical research into schizophrenia revived scientific interest in the schizophrenic brain as a progressive epistemic object. As the CT scanners were adopted in hospitals around the world, clinical studies with patients with schizophrenia examining neuroanatomical abnormalities were repeated using standardized diagnostic criteria. Unlike earlier invasive brain imaging techniques, the CT scanner could be used painlessly with large groups of patients and control subjects, satisfying the ethical and epistemic norms of modern clinical research. While the ultimate significance of these findings remains unclear, this paper shows how this new medical device was critical in making the schizophrenic brain a productive and ethical epistemic object for clinical researchers and biological psychiatrists around the world.

Author

• Alfred Freeborn, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin