Familial Basal Ganglia Calcification and Schizophreniform Psychosis

Schizophreniform psychoses have long been associated with a wide variety of clinical conditions affecting the basal ganglia (Davison and Bagley, 1969); amongst such disorders have been post-encephalitic psychosis (Fairweather, 1947), hepato-lenticular degeneration (Beard, 1959) and Huntington's chorea (Heathfield, 1967). Kalamboukis and Molling (1962) reported calcification of the basal ganglia in a single male schizophrenic and paranoid hallucinatory psychoses have been noted in other cases of striopallidodentate calcification (Löwenthal and Bruyn, 1968); however, an association between familial basal ganglia calcification and schizophreniform symptomatology has not been recorded.