alexandra_k: the WHO study and the fact that many people with schizophrenia recover from schizophrenia (or schizophrenic symptoms) without neuroleptics doesn't have any bearing on whether they also have ventricular enlargement.

What I was primarily addressing was this...

alexandra_k: The findings are also consistent with the hypothesis 'schizophrenia is a degenerative brain disorder'. In order to rule out the latter hypothesis (and hence more strongly support the former hypothesis) they would need to have a control group of people with schizophrenia ...

There is a control group of people with schizophrenia who do not take medication. They are found in other nations, cultures and settings, and captured within international studies such as that conducted by WHO. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that those individuals have a higher recovery rate. This is an indication that schizophrenia is not a degenerative brain disease -- a matter which has already been demonstrated as false through the work of individuals such as Courtenay Harding. Whether they also have larger or smaller ventricles is -- to me -- an irrelevant matter, since ventricle size itself is not an indication of schizophrenia.

Even if we were able to conduct neuroimaging studies on those groups of people, what would it tell us? If they did not have enlarged ventricles would it tell us that they did not have schizophrenia, or would it indicate that the use of neuroleptics produces a change in ventricle size? If we wish to prove a correlation between the use of anti-psychotic medication and ventricle size the study might be useful, but if we wish to demonstrate that schizophrenia is not a progressive disorder of degeneration... that's already been demonstrated via the WHO study and numerous others.