Han S Duke, Nestor Paul G, Wible Cynthia G
Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego, San Diego, California, USA.
Appl Neuropsychol. 2006;13(1):51-7. doi: 10.1207/s15324826an1301_7.
A neuropsychological hallmark of schizophrenia is a breakdown in semantic association networks that often impacts language and formal thought. Although computational models simulating this breakdown exist, studies have yet to investigate this phenomena using functional MRI (fMRI) coupled with an auditory lexical-decision semantic priming paradigm. Thus, this serves to functionally map brain activation to word pairs that differed with respect to a concept called "connectivity" in a patient with schizophrenia and a demographically matched control adult. Analyses revealed a striking difference with respect to the expected stepwise modulation of activation, with the control participant showing significantly greater areas of modulation than the participant with schizophrenia in regions classically implicated in language. Although the results are tentative because of the nature of this investigation (single-case study), they further support the characterization of schizophrenia as a breakdown in lexical-semantic association networks and represent one of the first fMRI studies of semantic priming in schizophrenia informed by a computer model.
精神分裂症的一个神经心理学特征是语义联想网络的崩溃，这常常影响语言和形式思维。尽管存在模拟这种崩溃的计算模型，但尚未有研究使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）结合听觉词汇判断语义启动范式来研究这一现象。因此，本研究旨在对一名精神分裂症患者和一名人口统计学匹配的对照成年人中，根据一个名为“连通性”的概念而有所不同的词对，进行大脑激活的功能映射。分析揭示了在预期的激活逐步调节方面存在显著差异，在经典的语言相关区域中，对照参与者显示出比精神分裂症患者更大的调节区域。尽管由于本研究的性质（单病例研究），结果具有一定的不确定性，但它们进一步支持了将精神分裂症描述为词汇-语义联想网络崩溃的观点，并代表了首批由计算机模型指导的精神分裂症语义启动功能磁共振成像研究之一。
