V. Menon et al., Functional neuroanatomy of auditory working memory in schizophrenia: Relation to positive and negative symptoms, NEUROIMAGE, 13(3), 2001, pp. 433-446
Functional brain imaging studies of working memory (WM) in schizophrenia ha
ve yielded inconsistent results regarding deficits in the dorsolateral pref
rontal (DLPFC) and parietal cortices. In spite of its potential importance
in schizophrenia, there have been few investigations of WM deficits using a
uditory stimuli and no functional imaging studies have attempted to relate
brain activation during auditory WM to positive and negative symptoms of sc
hizophrenia. We used a two-back auditory WM paradigm in a functional MRI st
udy of men with schizophrenia (N = 11) and controls (N = 13). Region of int
erest analysis was used to investigate group differences in activation as w
ell as correlations with symptom scores from the Brief Psychiatric Rating S
cale. Patients with schizophrenia performed significantly worse and were sl
ower than control subjects in the WM task. Patients also showed decreased l
ateralization of activation and significant WM related activation deficits
in the left and right DLPFC, frontal operculum, inferior parietal, and supe
rior parietal cortex but not in the anterior cingulate or superior temporal
gyrus. These results indicate that in addition to the prefrontal cortex, p
arietal cortex function is also disrupted during WM in schizophrenia. Withd
rawal-retardation symptom scores were inversely correlated with frontal ope
rculum activation. Thinking disturbance symptom scores were inversely corre
lated with right DLPFC activation. Our findings suggest an association betw
een thinking disturbance symptoms, particularly unusual thought content, an
d disrupted WM processing in schizophrenia. (C) 2001 Academic Press.