Department of Medical System Engineering, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Gwangju, Republic of Korea.
Institute of Behavioral Science in Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Psychiatry Res. 2015 Oct 30;234(1):66-73. doi: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2015.08.007. Epub 2015 Aug 20.
Abnormal abstract thinking is a major cause of social dysfunction in patients with schizophrenia, but little is known about its neural basis. In this study, we aimed to determine the characteristic abstract thinking-related brain responses in patients using a task reflecting social situations. We conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging while 16 patients with schizophrenia and 16 healthy controls performed a theme-identification task, in which various emotional pictures depicting social situations were presented. Compared with healthy controls, the patients showed significantly decreased activity in the left frontopolar and right orbitofrontal cortices during theme identification. Activity in these two regions correlated well in the controls, but not in patients. Instead, the patients exhibited a close correlation between activity in both sides of the frontopolar cortex, and a positive correlation between the right orbitofrontal cortex activity and degrees of theme identification. Reduced activity in the left frontopolar and right orbitofrontal cortices and the underlying aberrant connectivity may be implicated in the patients' deficits in abstract thinking. These newly identified features of the neural basis of abnormal abstract thinking are important as they have implications for the impaired social behavior of patients with schizophrenia during real-life situations.
异常的抽象思维是精神分裂症患者社交功能障碍的主要原因，但人们对其神经基础知之甚少。在这项研究中，我们旨在使用反映社会情境的任务来确定患者的特征性抽象思维相关脑反应。我们对 16 名精神分裂症患者和 16 名健康对照者进行了功能磁共振成像，在该任务中，呈现了各种描绘社会情境的情感图片。与健康对照组相比，患者在主题识别过程中左额极和右眶额皮质的活动明显减少。在对照组中，这两个区域的活动相关性很好，但在患者中则没有。相反，患者的额极两侧的活动之间存在密切的相关性，右侧眶额皮质的活动与主题识别的程度呈正相关。左额极和右眶额皮质活动减少以及潜在的异常连接可能与患者抽象思维能力缺陷有关。这些异常抽象思维神经基础的新发现特征很重要，因为它们对精神分裂症患者在现实生活情境中的社交行为障碍有影响。
