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Years after distinguishing manic-depressive insanity from dementia praecox on clinical grounds, Kraepelin said that he frequently could not tell the two disorders apart, and recent research has supported their overlapping features, genetic expression, and neurophysiology (JW Psychiatry Jun 14 2010). Because differences between monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins help to illuminate genetic versus environmental risk factors, researchers compared brain volumes in 13 MZ and 13 DZ twin pairs discordant for schizophrenia; 9 MZ and 4 DZ pairs concordant for bipolar disorder; 14 MZ and 22 DZ pairs discordant for bipolar disorder; and 44 MZ and 39 DZ control pairs.
Bipolar disorder was associated with larger intracranial volume, and schizophren…