Electrophysiology and Neurocognition in Schizophrenia

描述(申请人提供)：拟议的研究将检查精神分裂症患者及其遗传脆弱亲属空间工作记忆受损的电生理学相关性，试图表征这种神经认知缺陷的性质和程度，以及它的遗传性。具体描述的是一个数据分析协议，旨在描述工作记忆的神经认知方面，包括分布式皮质活动的整合程度，以及这种激活的绝对幅度。虽然患者和他们的亲属除了大脑皮质工作记忆回路节点之间的功能连接中断外，还表现出工作记忆性能下降，但关键的歧义点仍然存在：例如，当患者表现出工作记忆性能下降时，他们的大脑是相对比对照组的大脑更活跃，还是相对更活跃和效率更低？除其他外，本分析还涉及这一问题。还建议开发一项认知任务，旨在评估空间工作记忆和目标定向视觉注意之间重叠的性质和程度，这两个结构在精神分裂症患者及其亲属中被证明是受损的。此外，工作记忆和注意力都被认为与信息处理困难有关，这些困难被显示为预测患者的功能结果并表明其亲属的脆弱性；然而，必须直接研究它们的关系，以便分析各自对功能差异的贡献。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed study will examine electrophysiological correlates of disrupted spatial working memory in schizophrenia, patients and their genetically vulnerable relatives, in an attempt to characterize the nature and extent of this neurocognitive deficit, as well as its heritability. Specifically delineated is a data analysis protocol intended to describe neurocognitive aspects of working memory, including the extent of integration of distributed cortical activity, as well as the absolute magnitude of this activation. Although patients and their relatives show degraded working memory performance in addition to disrupted functional connectivity among the nodes of a putative cortical working memory circuit, critical points of ambiguity remain: e.g., when patients show degraded working memory performance, are their brains relatively less active than controls' brains, or relatively more active and less efficient? The present analyses address this issue, among others. Also proposed is the development of a cognitive task designed to assess the nature and extent of the overlap between spatial working memory and goal-directed visual attention, two constructs shown to be impaired in schizophrenia patients and their relatives. Further, both working memory and attention are believed to have relevance to the information processing difficulties shown to predict functional outcome in patients and indicate vulnerability in their relatives; however, their relationship must be studied directly in order to parse respective contributions to variance in functioning.