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Study Gives Insight Into Schizophrenia

Image from Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli, McGovern Institute for Brain Research

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging like the three images seen here, MIT researchers have discovered a possible clue to the cause of schizophrenia. The fMRI image at left shows the amount of interconnectivity, the red areas, in the "default" areas of the brain of a person who is not schizophrenic. The image at right shows much higher default brain interconnectivity in a schizophrenic. At center is an fMRI image of a first-degree relative of a schizophrenic. The slightly increased connectivity suggests the genetic predisposition to the disorder seen in first-degree relatives of schizophrenics.

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Published: January 28, 2009

People with the devastating neuropsychiatric disorder schizophrenia often are stuck in a mental world in which they have problem relating to others and performing tasks that require concentration on what's going outside their minds.

Researchers have used a medical imaging technique to discover clues that could help explain this schizophrenia phenomenon.

Writing in the Jan. 19 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research and Harvard Medical School say the brains of schizophrenics appear to have increase connections between what are know as the "default" regions of the brain.

Neuroscientists believe the default regions become active when people are either thinking about themselves or nothing in particular. The default brain includes the medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex. These brain regions are associated with self-reflection and autobiographical memories.

This increased connectivity between the default regions may explain why schizophrenics can be lost in their own world and have trouble performing tasks.

"People normally suppress this default system when they perform challenging tasks, but we found that patients with schizophrenia don't do this," said John D. Gabrieli, a McGovern Institute professor. Gabrieli was one of the study's 13 authors.

The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to discover higher default brain interconnectivity in schizophrenics in comparison to healthy individuals. In addition, they notice that first-degree relatives of schizophrenics without psychotic symptoms have increased default region interconnectivity but not as much as schizophrenics.

Scientists already knew that first-degree relatives of schizophrenics - their parents, siblings or children - are 10 times more likely to come down with the disorder than the general population.

Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli, a research scientist at the MIT Martinos Imaging Center, who analyzed the fMRI data, says schizophrenics showed higher default brain interconnectivity whether at rest or while performing memory tasks during testing administered by her study colleagues at Harvard.

"We think this may reflect an inability of people with schizophrenia to direct mental resources away from internal thoughts and feelings and toward the external world in order to perform difficult tasks," Whitfield-Gabrieli explained.

In addition to providing insights into what is happening within the minds of schizophrenics, the research could lead to methods of assessing the effectiveness of schizophrenia treatments, Gabrieli said.

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