Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstr. 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany.
Schizophr Res. 2010 Jul;120(1-3):167-76. doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2009.12.008. Epub 2010 Jan 6.
Subtle emotional and cognitive dysfunctions may already be apparent in individuals at risk for psychosis. However, there is a paucity of research on the neural correlates of the interaction of both domains. It remains unclear whether those correlates are already dysfunctional before a transition to psychosis. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the interaction of working memory and emotion in 12 persons clinically at high risk for psychosis (CHR) and 12 healthy subjects individually matched for age, gender and parental education. Participants performed an n-back task while negative or neutral emotion was induced by olfactory stimulation. Although healthy and psychosis-prone subjects did not differ in their working memory performance or the evaluation of the induced emotion, decreased activations were found in CHR subjects in the superior parietal lobe and the precuneus during working memory and in the insula during emotion induction. Looking at the interaction, CHR subjects, showed decreased activation in the right superior temporal gyrus, which correlated negatively with psychopathological scores. Decreased activation was also found in the thalamus. However, an increase of activation emerged in several cerebellar regions. Dysfunctions in areas associated with controlling whether incoming information is linked to emotional content and in the integration of multimodal information might lead to compensatory activations of cerebellar regions known to be involved in olfactory and working memory processes. Our study underlines that cerebral dysfunctions related to cognitive and emotional processes, as well as their interaction, can emerge in persons with CHR, even in absence of behavioral differences.
微妙的情感和认知功能障碍可能已经在处于精神病风险的个体中显现。然而，关于这两个领域相互作用的神经相关性的研究很少。目前尚不清楚这些相关性是否在向精神病过渡之前就已经出现功能障碍。我们使用功能磁共振成像技术，对 12 名临床处于精神病高危状态（CHR）的个体以及 12 名在年龄、性别和父母教育方面相匹配的健康个体的工作记忆和情绪相互作用进行了研究。参与者在进行 n-back 任务时，通过嗅觉刺激来诱发负面或中性情绪。尽管健康和精神病倾向的个体在工作记忆表现或诱发情绪的评估方面没有差异，但在执行工作记忆任务时，CHR 个体的上顶叶和楔前叶以及在诱发情绪时的岛叶的激活程度降低。在观察相互作用时，CHR 个体在右侧颞上回的激活程度降低，这与精神病症状评分呈负相关。在丘脑也发现了激活减少。然而，几个小脑区域的激活增加。与控制传入信息是否与情绪内容相关以及整合多模态信息相关的区域的功能障碍可能导致与嗅觉和工作记忆过程相关的小脑区域的代偿性激活。我们的研究强调了与认知和情感过程及其相互作用相关的大脑功能障碍，即使在没有行为差异的情况下，也可能在 CHR 个体中显现。
