BDNF and schizophrenia: As striatal neurons are trophically dependent on BDNF suppliedthrough anterograde transport from the frontal cortex (Hofer et al.1990; Altar et al.1997; Rauskolb et al.2010; Dieni et al.2012), higher levels of BDNF would be expected torelate to stronger frontal–striatal activity in a healthy brain, and a reduction of prefrontalcortical BDNF, as found in schizophrenia (Weickert et al.2003; Hashimoto et al.2005), would be expected to negatively impactstriatal function in schizophrenia.