Background
Schizophrenia symptoms can be conceptualized in terms of a breakdown of a balance
between 1) activating, retrieving, and matching stored representations to incoming
information (semantic memory-based processing) and 2) fully integrating activated
semantic representations with one another and with other types of representations
to form a gestalt representation of meaning (semantic integration). Semantic memory-based
processes are relatively more dependent on inferior frontal and temporal cortices,
whereas particularly demanding integrative processes additionally recruit the dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and sometimes parietal cortices. We used functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine whether the modulation of temporal/inferior
frontal cortices and the DLPFC can be neuroanatomically dissociated in schizophrenia,
as semantic integration demands increase. Integration demands were manipulated by
varying the nature (concrete vs. abstract) and the congruity (incongruous vs. congruous)
of words within sentences.
Methods
Sixteen right-handed schizophrenia patients and 16 healthy volunteers, matched on
age and parental socioeconomic status, underwent event-related fMRI scanning while
they read sentences. Blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) effects were contrasted to
words within sentences that were 1) concrete versus abstract and 2) semantically incongruous
versus congruous with their preceding contexts.
Results
In both contrasts, large networks mediating the activation and retrieval of verbal
and imagistic representations were normally modulated in patients. However, unlike
control subjects, patients failed to recruit the DLPFC, medial frontal and parietal
cortices to incongruous (relative to congruous) sentences, and failed to recruit the
DLPFC to concrete (relative to abstract) sentences.
Conclusions
As meaning is built from language, schizophrenia patients demonstrate a neuroanatomical
dissociation in the modulation of temporal/inferior frontal cortices and the DLPFC.
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: May 27, 2008
Accepted:
March 20,
2008
Received in revised form:
February 19,
2008
Received:
December 8,
2007
Identification
Copyright
© 2008 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
