Little Black Box

Schizophrenia (split personality) is the most mysterious, and perhaps the commonest, of mental disorders. It is hard to diagnose, hard to treat, and it accounts for at least 35% of U.S. insane-asylum inmates.

Psychiatrists would like to have some sure method of telling whether a patient is schizophrenic--and whether treatment is doing him any good. Dr. Robert G. Grenell, at Yale University's department of neuroanatomy, added a new idea to an old gadget, evolved a technique that he hopes will answer both questions.

The presence of electricity in animal brains has been known since 1874; variations in the brain's electrical patterns have been used as a test for epilepsy in human beings since 1929. Dr. Grenell used a microvoltmeter to measure minute amounts of direct current; direct current, he thinks, reflects slow body processes like cell growth. He put his microvoltmeter inside a black plastic cabinet about the size of a cigar box. Then he attached two ordinary electrodes made from medicine droppers.

He studied 150 schizophrenic patients from the Fairfield (Conn.) State Hospital by applying his electrodes to five* points on their bodies. He also studied 80 normal people. The difference between the amount of electricity produced by normal people and by schizophrenics was startling. Readings from the schizophrenics were very high, averaging around 65 microvolts (a microvolt is one-thousandth of a volt); normal people never sent the readings higher than about eleven microvolts. As the insane patients improved under treatment, their electrical readings fell closer & closer to normal. But if they stayed sick, their electrical marks stayed high.

Dr. Grenell has not figured out the basic cause of the dramatic variations; he thinks that there must be some sort of metabolic upset in the brain cells of schizophrenic patients. Last week he was experimenting with his little black box to find out if age, sex, pregnancy or serious illness can affect his readings.

* Right and left sides of the forehead and chest, and the menubrium, a little notch at the base of the throat.

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