The researchers found out that some of the brain cycles were different or missing in people with schizophrenia who had passed away.

People with schizophrenia usually have problems with their body clock, but we don’t know much about the shorter cycles of gene activity in their brain.

In a new study published in the journal PLOS Biology, researchers are highlighting how individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia commonly experience disruptions in various 24-hour biological rhythms.

These include sleep/wake patterns, hormone secretion, and gene functioning in the prefrontal cortex.

However, scientists still don’t fully understand how genes work in the brain when it comes to cycles shorter than the typical 24-hour sleep-wake cycle. This is true for both people with schizophrenia and those without the mental health condition.

The new study involved a time-of-death analysis to investigate the 12-hour rhythms of gene activity within postmortem brains, since gene transcript levels can’t be measured in live brains.

These findings are important for understanding the mechanisms of schizophrenia and could lead to the development of novel treatments for this disorder. Overall, the study highlights the importance of utilizing human brain tissue to discover the complex mechanisms underlying schizophrenia.