Brain scans of untreated people with schizophrenia reveal, over time, a subtle, but perceptible, loss of gray matter, which contains the cell body and dendrites of neurons in the cerebral cortex. This loss of gray matter, which contributes to the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia, is thought to result from excessive pruning of dendrites during development, which leads to loss of synaptic connections among neurons, as we shall see later in this chapter.
