Electrophysiology and Neurocognition in Schizophrenia

描述（由申请人提供）：拟议的研究将检查精神分裂症患者及其遗传易感亲属的空间工作记忆中断的电生理相关性，试图表征这种神经认知缺陷的性质和程度，以及其遗传性。具体描绘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，包括分布式皮层活动的整合程度，以及这种激活的绝对幅度。尽管患者及其亲属除了在假定的皮层工作记忆回路的节点之间的功能连接被破坏外，还表现出工作记忆性能下降，但关键的模糊点仍然存在：例如，当病人的工作记忆表现下降时，他们的大脑是比对照组的大脑相对不活跃，还是相对更活跃、效率更低？目前的分析除其他外涉及这一问题。还提出了一个认知任务的发展，旨在评估空间工作记忆和目标导向的视觉注意之间的重叠的性质和程度，这两个结构被证明是受损的精神分裂症患者及其亲属。此外，工作记忆和注意力都被认为与信息处理困难有关，这些信息处理困难可以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，以解析各自对功能变化的贡献。

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.