REGIONAL CEREBRAL BLOOD-FLOW DISTRIBUTION IN NEWLY-DIAGNOSED SCHIZOPHRENIA AND SCHIZOPHRENIFORM DISORDER

Regional cerebral blood flow distribution (rCBF) in 24 first admission s with schizophrenia or schizophreniform disorder and in 17 healthy vo lunteers was examined. Single photon emission computed tomography with a brain-retained tracer, technetium-99m-d,1-hexamethyl-propylene amin e oxime, was used to study subjects under resting conditions and durin g performance of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. The study is a repli cation of a previous investigation in an independent series of patient s and healthy volunteers. The patients had significantly lower relativ e blood flow in prefrontal regions during activation than did the heal thy volunteers. An earlier series of 19 patients and 7 healthy volunte ers was studied using exactly the same procedure. Analyses of the comb ined samples from the two studies (43 patients and 24 healthy voluntee rs) showed the patients to have significantly lower relative flow in p refrontal regions both at rest and during activation and higher flow i n the left striatum during activation. The same finding emerged when a nalyses were confined to drug-naive patients and patients educationall y matched to the healthy volunteers. The study suggests a defective fr ontostriatal interrelationship in schizophrenia and schizophreniform d isorder.