Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, Davis, Davis, California; Center for Neuroscience, University of California, Davis, Davis, California.
Center for Neuroscience, University of California, Davis, Davis, California; Department of Neurology, University of California, Davis, Davis, California.
Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging. 2023 Oct;8(10):1050-1057. doi: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2023.05.010. Epub 2023 Jun 7.
Dysfunctional cognitive control processes are now well understood to be core features of schizophrenia (SZ). A body of work suggests that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) plays a critical role in explaining cognitive control disruptions in SZ. Here, we examined relationships between DLPFC activation and drift rate (DR), a model-based performance measure that combines reaction time and accuracy, in people with SZ and healthy control (HC) participants.
One hundred fifty-one people with recent-onset SZ spectrum disorders and 118 HC participants performed the AX-Continuous Performance Task during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. Proactive cognitive control-associated activation was extracted from left and right DLPFC regions of interest. Individual behavior was fit using a drift diffusion model, allowing DR to vary between task conditions.
Behaviorally, people with SZ showed significantly lower DRs than HC participants, particularly during high proactive control trial types ("B" trials). Recapitulating previous findings, the SZ group also demonstrated reduced cognitive control-associated DLPFC activation compared with HC participants. Furthermore, significant group differences were also observed in the relationship between left and right DLPFC activation with DR, such that positive relationships between DR and activation were found in HC participants but not in people with SZ.
These results suggest that DLPFC activation is less associated with cognitive control-related behavioral performance enhancements in SZ. Potential mechanisms and implications are discussed.
现在人们已经充分认识到，认知控制过程的障碍是精神分裂症（SZ）的核心特征。大量研究表明，背外侧前额叶皮层（DLPFC）在解释 SZ 中的认知控制障碍方面起着关键作用。在这里，我们研究了 SZ 患者和健康对照（HC）参与者的 DLPFC 激活与漂移率（DR）之间的关系，DR 是一种基于模型的绩效衡量标准，结合了反应时间和准确性。
151 名首发 SZ 谱系障碍患者和 118 名 HC 参与者在功能磁共振成像扫描期间进行了 AX-连续绩效任务。从左、右 DLPFC 感兴趣区提取与主动认知控制相关的激活。使用漂移扩散模型拟合个体行为，允许 DR 在任务条件之间变化。
行为上，SZ 患者的 DR 明显低于 HC 参与者，尤其是在高主动控制试验类型（“B”试验）中。与之前的发现一致，与 HC 参与者相比，SZ 组的认知控制相关 DLPFC 激活也减少了。此外，还观察到左、右 DLPFC 激活与 DR 之间的关系存在显著的组间差异，即 HC 参与者的 DR 与激活之间存在正相关关系，而 SZ 患者则没有。
这些结果表明，DLPFC 激活与 SZ 中与认知控制相关的行为表现增强的相关性较低。讨论了潜在的机制和意义。
