Wolfson Centre for Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Bangor University, Bangor, UK.
Neuropsychobiology. 2011;64(2):93-101. doi: 10.1159/000323800. Epub 2011 Jun 21.
Dysfunctional working memory (WM) has been recognized as one of the most consistent deficits in schizophrenia. Studies that investigated the neural correlates of WM-related pathology by comparing patients with schizophrenia and control participants have produced controversial results, reporting task-related hyper- or hypoactivity in frontoparietal networks.
We addressed this question by comparing BOLD signals for accurate responses during a WM task for emotional faces between a homogeneous group of high-performing patients and a control group.
Our results confirm previous findings of left prefrontal hyperactivity contrasted with hypoactivity in right prefrontal cortex to support WM performance. We also extend previous work by reporting enhanced activity in higher visual areas of patients during encoding and maintenance.
Our findings and those of the literature can be integrated into a model, where preserved visual cognition in high-functioning patients with hypofrontality is explained by activation of contralateral homologue areas combined with enhanced recruitment of sensory areas.
功能失调的工作记忆（WM）已被认为是精神分裂症中最一致的缺陷之一。通过比较精神分裂症患者和对照组参与者来研究与 WM 相关病理学相关的神经相关性的研究产生了有争议的结果，报告在前顶网络中与任务相关的过度或活动不足。
我们通过比较情绪面孔 WM 任务中准确反应的 BOLD 信号，来解决这个问题，比较了表现良好的同质患者组和对照组之间的 BOLD 信号。
我们的结果证实了先前的发现，即左前额叶活动过度，而右前额叶皮层活动不足，以支持 WM 表现。我们还通过报告在编码和维持期间患者较高视觉区域的增强活动来扩展以前的工作。
我们的发现和文献中的发现可以整合到一个模型中，其中低前额叶功能的高功能患者的视觉认知保留可以通过激活对侧同源区域结合增强感觉区域的招募来解释。
