BDNF and schizophrenia: BDNF shapes the development of neuronal circuits, as well as the construction of inhibitory connections throughout life (Kovalchuk et al., 2004; Gubellini et al., 2005; Gottmann et al., 2009) and alterations in BDNF processing have been observed in diseases of the CNS, including schizophrenia, ASD and epilepsy (Binder et al., 2001; Carlino et al., 2011; Garcia et al., 2012).