An Anterior-to-Posterior Shift in Midline Cortical Activity in Schizophrenia During Self-Reflection
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Gabrieli_An anterior-to-posterior.pdf
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Author(s)
Holt, Daphne J.
Cassidy, Brittany S.
Andrews-Hanna, Jessica R.
Lee, Su Mei
Coombs, Garth
Goff, Donald C.
Moran, Joseph M.
Gabrieli, John D. E.
Date Issued
December 2010
Journal
Biological Psychiatry
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
Holt, Daphne J., Brittany S. Cassidy, Jessica R. Andrews-Hanna, Su Mei Lee, Garth Coombs, Donald C. Goff, John D. Gabrieli, and Joseph M. Moran. “An Anterior-to-Posterior Shift in Midline Cortical Activity in Schizophrenia During Self-Reflection.” Biological Psychiatry 69, no. 5 (March 2011): 415–423.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Background
Deficits in social cognition, including impairments in self-awareness, contribute to the overall functional disability associated with schizophrenia. Studies in healthy subjects have shown that social cognitive functions, including self-reflection, rely on the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and posterior cingulate gyrus, and these regions exhibit highly correlated activity during “resting” states. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that patients with schizophrenia show dysfunction of this network during self-reflection and that this abnormal activity is associated with changes in the strength of resting-state correlations between these regions.
Methods
Activation during self-reflection and control tasks was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging in 19 patients with schizophrenia and 20 demographically matched control subjects. In addition, the resting-state functional connectivity of midline cortical areas showing abnormal self-reflection-related activation in schizophrenia was measured.
Results
Compared with control subjects, the schizophrenia patients demonstrated lower activation of the right ventral mPFC and greater activation of the mid/posterior cingulate gyri bilaterally during self-reflection, relative to a control task. A similar pattern was seen during overall social reflection. In addition, functional connectivity between the portion of the left mid/posterior cingulate gyrus showing abnormally elevated activity during self-reflection in schizophrenia, and the dorsal anterior cingulate gyrus was lower in the schizophrenia patients compared with control subjects.
Conclusions
Schizophrenia is associated with an anterior-to-posterior shift in introspection-related activation, as well as changes in functional connectivity, of the midline cortex. These findings provide support for the hypothesis that aberrant midline cortical function contributes to social cognitive impairment in schizophrenia.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2010.10.003
