Yeo R A, Martinez D, Pommy J, Ehrlich S, Schulz S C, Ho B-C, Bustillo J R, Calhoun V D
Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, USA.
Psychol Med. 2014 Apr;44(6):1257-65. doi: 10.1017/S0033291713001608. Epub 2013 Jul 19.
Relatively lower executive functioning is characteristic of individuals with schizophrenia. As low socio-economic status (SES) early in life (i.e. parent SES) has been linked with lower executive skills in healthy children, we hypothesized that parental SES (pSES) would be more strongly related to executive functioning in individuals with schizophrenia than in controls and have a greater impact on prefrontal cortical morphology.
Healthy controls (n = 125) and individuals with schizophrenia (n = 102) completed tests assessing executive functioning and intelligence. The groups were matched on pSES, which was evaluated with the Hollingshead-Redlich scale. A principal components analysis (PCA) was conducted on 10 variables from six executive tests, yielding three specific components (fluency, planning and response inhibition). Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used to evaluate effects of pSES on gray matter (GM) concentration.
Lower pSES was associated with lower scores across the three executive functioning components, and a significant group by pSES interaction was observed such that low pSES, in particular, affected individuals with schizophrenia. These effects remained significant when intellectual ability, education and self-SES (sSES) were added as covariates. VBM revealed that lower pSES was associated with reduced GM volume in several anterior brain regions, especially the superior frontal gyrus, in patients but not in controls.
These findings suggest that individuals with schizophrenia may be particularly vulnerable to the adverse impact of low pSES, in terms of both lower executive skills and reduced anterior GM volumes.
执行功能相对较低是精神分裂症患者的特征。由于生命早期的低社会经济地位（SES）（即父母的SES）与健康儿童较低的执行技能有关，我们假设父母的SES（pSES）与精神分裂症患者的执行功能的相关性比对照组更强，并且对前额叶皮质形态有更大的影响。
健康对照组（n = 125）和精神分裂症患者（n = 102）完成了评估执行功能和智力的测试。两组在pSES上进行了匹配，pSES用霍林斯黑德-雷德利希量表进行评估。对来自六项执行测试的10个变量进行主成分分析（PCA），得出三个特定成分（流畅性、计划性和反应抑制）。基于体素的形态测量法（VBM）用于评估pSES对灰质（GM）浓度的影响。
较低的pSES与三个执行功能成分的较低分数相关，并且观察到了显著的组×pSES交互作用，即低pSES尤其影响精神分裂症患者。当将智力、教育和自我SES（sSES）作为协变量添加时，这些效应仍然显著。VBM显示，较低的pSES与患者几个前脑区域（尤其是额上回）的GM体积减少有关，但对照组没有。
这些发现表明，精神分裂症患者在执行技能较低和前脑GM体积减少方面可能特别容易受到低pSES的不利影响。
