Background
In schizophrenia, disturbances of cognitive control have been associated with impaired
functional specialization within the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC), but little
is known about the functional interactions between specialized LPFC subregions. Here,
we addressed this question with a recent model that describes the LPFC functioning
as a cascade of control processes along a rostrocaudal axis, whereby anterior frontal
regions influence the processing in posterior frontal regions to guide action selection
on the basis of the temporal structure of information.
Methods
We assessed effective connectivity within the rostrocaudal axis of the LPFC by means
of functional magnetic resonance imaging in 15 schizophrenic patients and 14 matched
healthy control subjects with structural equation modeling and psychophysiological
interactions.
Results
In healthy subjects, activity in the left caudal LPFC regions was under the influence
of left rostral LPFC regions when controlling information conveyed by past events.
By contrast, schizophrenic patients failed to demonstrate significant effective connectivity
from rostral to caudal LPFC regions in both hemispheres.
Conclusions
The hierarchical control along the rostrocaudal axis of the LPFC is impaired in schizophrenia.
This provides the first evidence of a top-down functional disconnection within the
LPFC in this disorder. This disruption of top-down connectivity from rostral to caudal
LPFC regions observed in patients might affect their ability to select the appropriate
sets of stimulus-response associations in the caudal LPFC on the basis of information
conveyed by past events. This impaired hierarchical control within the LPFC could
result from poorly encoded contextual information due to abnormal computations in
the caudal LPFC.
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: April 13, 2011
Accepted:
February 1,
2011
Received in revised form:
January 31,
2011
Received:
December 30,
2009
Footnotes
Authors VC and PJDD contributed equally to this work.
Identification
Copyright
© 2011 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
