Park S, Holzman P S
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.
Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1992 Dec;49(12):975-82. doi: 10.1001/archpsyc.1992.01820120063009.
The present study demonstrates that schizophrenics are impaired on spatial delayed-response tasks, analogous to those that have been used to assess the working memory function of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in rhesus monkeys. Schizophrenic patients and two control groups, normal subjects and bipolar psychiatric patients, were tested on the oculomotor version of the memory task, a haptic version of the same task, and two control tasks: a sensory task that did not require working memory and a digit span test. The schizophrenic patients showed marked deficits relative to the two control groups in both the oculomotor and haptic delayed-response tasks. They were not, however, impaired on the digit span test, which taps verbal working memory as well as voluntary attention, and on the sensory control task, in which their responses were guided by external cues rather than by spatial working memory. These findings provide direct evidence that schizophrenics suffer a loss in representational processing and that this deficit is modality independent. These data on spatial working memory add to the growing evidence for involvement of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in schizophrenic disease.
本研究表明，精神分裂症患者在空间延迟反应任务中存在障碍，这与用于评估恒河猴背外侧前额叶皮质工作记忆功能的任务类似。对精神分裂症患者以及两个对照组，即正常受试者和双相情感障碍精神病患者，进行了记忆任务的动眼神经版本、同一任务的触觉版本以及两个对照任务的测试：一个不需要工作记忆的感觉任务和一个数字广度测试。与两个对照组相比，精神分裂症患者在动眼神经和触觉延迟反应任务中均表现出明显缺陷。然而，他们在数字广度测试（该测试同时考察言语工作记忆和自愿注意）以及感觉控制任务（在该任务中他们的反应由外部线索而非空间工作记忆引导）中并未受损。这些发现提供了直接证据，表明精神分裂症患者在表征加工方面存在缺失，且这种缺陷与感觉方式无关。这些关于空间工作记忆的数据进一步证明了背外侧前额叶皮质参与精神分裂症发病的证据越来越多。
