Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry

In order to understand the pathogenesis and progression of some synaptic loss related neuropsychiatric diseases, We attempted to develop a computer model in this study. We made a simple autoassociative memory network remembering numbers, transformed it into a disease model by pruning synapses, and measured its memory performance as a function of synaptic deletion. Decline in performance was measured as amount of synaptic loss increases and its mode of decline is sudden or gradual according to the mode of synaptic pruning. The developed computer model demonstrated how synaptic loss could cause memory impairment through a series of computer simulations, and suggested a new way of research in neuropsychiatry.

Keywords Computer model;Dementia;Neural network;Schizophrenia;Synapse.