Abstract
The brain functional correlates of autobiographical recall are well established, but have been little studied in schizophrenia. Additionally, autobiographical memory is one of a small number of cognitive tasks that activates rather than de-activates the default mode network, which has been found to be dysfunctional in this disorder. Twenty-seven schizophrenic patients and 30 healthy controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while viewing cue words that evoked autobiographical memories. Control conditions included both non-memory-evoking cues and a low level baseline (cross fixation). Compared to both non-memory evoking cues and low level baseline, autobiographical recall was associated with activation in default mode network regions in the controls including the medial frontal cortex, the posterior cingulate cortex and the hippocampus, as well as other areas. Clusters of de-activation were seen outside the default mode network. There were no activation differences between the schizophrenic patients and the controls, but the patients showed clusters of failure of de-activation in non-default mode network regions. According to this study, patients with schizophrenia show intact activation of the default mode network and other regions associated with recall of autobiographical memories. The finding of failure of de-activation outside the network suggests that schizophrenia may be associated with a general difficulty in de-activation rather than dysfunction of the default mode network per se.
Highlights
The brain functional correlates of autobiographical recall are well established, but have been little studied in schizophrenia
Given the evidence for failure of default mode de-activation in schizophrenia, how the network behaves during a task like autobiographical memory, which normally activates it, is clearly of some interest. We examined both activations and de-activations associated with autobiographical recall in schizophrenia, using a larger sample of patients and controls than in Cuervo-Lombard et al.’s (2012) study and employing whole-brain analysis with correction for multiple comparisons
FMRI findings: memory-evoking v. non-memory evoking cues. In this contrast the healthy controls showed a large cluster of greater activation to the memory-evoking cues than the non-memory-evoking cues in the medial frontal cortex extending to the orbitofrontal cortex and temporal poles bilaterally, as well as to the thalamus, the basal ganglia, the hippocampus and the parahippocampal cortex
Summary
The brain functional correlates of autobiographical recall are well established, but have been little studied in schizophrenia. Twenty-seven schizophrenic patients and 30 healthy controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while viewing cue words that evoked autobiographical memories. Control conditions included both non-memory-evoking cues and a low level baseline (cross fixation). Compared to both non-memory evoking cues and low level baseline, autobiographical recall was associated with activation in default mode network regions in the controls including the medial frontal cortex, the posterior cingulate cortex and the hippocampus, as well as other areas. Patients with schizophrenia show intact activation of the default mode network and other regions associated with recall of autobiographical memories. The finding of failure of de-activation outside the network suggests that schizophrenia may be associated with a general difficulty in de-activation rather than dysfunction of the default mode network per se
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