Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T08:45:33.215Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Regional Brain Activity in Chronic Schizophrenic Patients during the Performance of a Verbal Fluency Task

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

C. D. Frith ,
K. J. Friston ,
S. Herold ,
D. Silbersweig ,
P. Fletcher ,
C. Cahill ,
R. J. Dolan ,
R. S. J. Frackowiak  and
P. F. Liddle
C. D. Frith*
Affiliation:
Institute of Neurology and MRC Cyclotron Unit, London
K. J. Friston
Affiliation:
Institute of Neurology and MRC Cyclotron Unit
S. Herold
Affiliation:
Charing Cross Hospital, London
D. Silbersweig
Affiliation:
Cornell Medical School, Ithaca, NY, USA, and MRC Cyclotron Unit
P. Fletcher
Affiliation:
Royal Free Hospital, London, and MRC Cyclotron Unit
C. Cahill
Affiliation:
MRC Cyclotron Unit
R. J. Dolan
Affiliation:
Institute of Neurology and Royal Free Hospital
R. S. J. Frackowiak
Affiliation:
Institute of Neurology and MRC Cyclotron Unit
P. F. Liddle
Affiliation:
Royal Postgraduate Medical School, London
*
Professor Frith, Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology, Institute of Neurology, c/o Cyclotron Unit, Clinical Sciences Centre, DuCane Road, London W12 0HS
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Background

This study examined the pattern of cerebral blood flow observed in chronic schizophrenic patients while they performed a paced verbal fluency task. Such tasks engage a distributed brain system associated with willed action. Since willed action is impaired in many chronic schizophrenic patients we hypothesised that task performance would be associated with an abnormal pattern of blood flow.

Method

Positron emission tomography (PET) was applied to 18 chronic schizophrenic patients stratified into three groups on the basis of verbal fluency performance and current symptoms. Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) was measured while the patients performed (a) verbal fluency, (b) word categorisation, and (c) word repetition. Results were compared with six normal controls matched for age, sex and premorbid IQ. Analysis was restricted to six brain regions previously identified in studies of normal volunteers.

Results

In five brain areas, including the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the patients showed the same pattern of activation as control subjects. However, in the left superior temporal cortex, all patient groups failed to show the normal decrease in blood flow when verbal fluency was compared with word repetition.

Conclusion

These observations suggest that (a) chronic schizophrenic patients can show a normal magnitude of frontal activation when matched for performance with controls, and (b) they fail to show the expected reductions of activity in the superior temporal cortex. This latter result may reflect abnormal functional connectivity between frontal and temporal cortex.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 167 , Issue 3 , September 1995 , pp. 343 - 349
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1.

This was the last study completed by Sigrid Herold before her untimely death in 1992.

References

Allen, H. A., Liddle, P. F. & Frith, C. D. (1993) Negative features, retrieval processes and verbal fluency in schizophrenia. British Journal of Psychiatry, 163, 769–775.10.1192/bjp.163.6.769Google Scholar
Andreasen, N. C., Rezai, K., Allioer, R., et al (1992) Hypofrontality in neuroleptic-naive patients and in patients with chronic schizophrenia. Archives of General Psychiatry, 49, 943–958.10.1001/archpsyc.1992.01820120031006Google Scholar
Battig, W. F. & Montague, W. E. (1969) Category norms for verbal items in 56 categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Monograph, 80, 1–46.10.1037/h0027577Google Scholar
Friston, K. J., Frith, C. D., Liddle, P. F., et al (1991) Investigating a network model of word generation with positron emission tomography. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, 244, 101–106.Google Scholar
Friston, K. J., Frith, C. D., Liddle, P. F., et al (1993) Functional connectivity: the principal component analysis of large (PET) data sets. Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism, 15, 5–14.10.1038/jcbfm.1993.4Google Scholar
Frith, C. D. (1992) The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia. Hove, Sussex: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Frith, C. D.Friston, K. J., Liddle, P. F. & Frackowiak, R. S. J. (1991a) A PET study of word finding. Neuropsychologic, 28, 1137–1148.10.1016/0028-3932(91)90029-8Google Scholar
Frith, C. D.Friston, K. J., Liddle, P. F.et al (1991b) Willed action and the prefrontal cortex in man. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, 244, 241–246.Google Scholar
Gold, J. M. & Weinberger, D. R. (1991) Frontal lobe structure, function and connectivity in schizophrenia. In Neurobiology and Psychiatry, Vol. 1 (ed. Kerwin, R. T.), pp. 39–59. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goldman-Rakic, P. S. (1986) Circuitry of primate prefrontal cortex and regulation of behavior by representational memory. In Handbook of Physiology, Vol. V (eds V. B. Mountcastle, F. E. Bloom & S. R. Geiger), pp. 373–417. Philadelphia: American Physiological Society.Google Scholar
Ingvar, D. H. & Franzen, G. (1974) Abnormalities of cerebral blood flow distribution in patients with chronic schizophrenia. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 50, 425–462.10.1111/j.1600-0447.1974.tb09707.xGoogle Scholar
Liddle, P. F., Friston, K. J., Frith, C. D., et al (1992) Patterns of cerebral blood flow in schizophrenia. British Journal of Psychiatry, 160, 179–186.10.1192/bjp.160.2.179Google Scholar
Nelson, H. E. & O'Connell, A. (1978) Dementia: the estimation of premorbid intelligence levels using the new adult reading test. Cortex, 14, 234–244.10.1016/S0010-9452(78)80049-5Google Scholar
Price, C., Wise, R. J. S., Ramsay, S., et al (1992) Regional response differences within the human auditory cortex when listening to words. Neuroscience Letters, 146, 179–182.10.1016/0304-3940(92)90072-FGoogle Scholar
Raichle, M. A., Fietz, J. A., Videen, T. O., et al (1994) Practice-related changes in human brain functional anatomy during nonmotor learning. Cerebral Cortex, 4, 8–26.10.1093/cercor/4.1.8Google Scholar
Robbins, T. W. (1990) The case for frontostriatal dysfunction in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 16, 391–402.10.1093/schbul/16.3.391Google Scholar
Stephan, K. M., Fink, G. R., Passingham, R. E., et al (1995) Functional anatomy of the mental representation of upper extremity movements in healthy subjects. Journal of Neurophysiology, 73, 373–386.10.1152/jn.1995.73.1.373Google Scholar
Talairach, J. & Tournoux, P. (1988) A Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of a Human Brain. Stuttgart: Thieme.Google Scholar
Weinberger, D. R., Berman, K. F. & Zec, R. F. (1986) Physiologic dysfunction of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia. I. Regional cerebral blood flow evidence. Archives of General Psychiatry, 43, 114–124.10.1001/archpsyc.1986.01800020020004Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.