Structural and Functional Alterations of the Temporal lobe in Schizophrenia: A Literature Review

Schizophrenia is a severe chronic mental illness leading to social and occupational dysfunction. Our primary focus in this review article was to analyze further the structural and functional alterations of the temporal lobe in patients with schizophrenia, which might contribute to the associated manifestations we often see in this illness. Our goal was to see if there was any correlation between temporal lobe abnormalities, more specifically, alterations in brain volume and specific symptoms such as auditory and language processing, etc. There is a positive correlation between volume alterations and thoughts disorders in the temporal lobe in the majority of studies. However, superior temporal gyrus volume has also been correlated negatively with the severity of hallucinations and thought disorders in some studies. We utilized Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) search strategy via PubMed database in our articles search yielding 241 papers. After the application of specific inclusion and exclusion criteria, a final number of 30 was reviewed. The involvement of the temporal lobe and its gray and white matter volume alterations in schizophrenia is quite apparent from our research; however, the exact mechanism of the underlying biological process is not thoroughly studied yet. Therefore, further research on larger cohorts combining different imaging modalities including volumetry, diffusion tensor, and functional imaging is required to explain how the progressive brain changes affect the various structural, functional, and metabolic activities of the temporal lobe in schizophrenia.