Information Processing Flow and Neural Activations in the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in the Stroop Task in Schizophrenic Patients

Abstract

Using a spatially filtered magnetoencephalography analysis (synthetic aperture magnetometry), we estimated neural activations in the Stroop task in nearly real time for schizophrenic patients with/without auditory hallucinations and for normal control subjects. In addition, auditory hallucinations were examined through the information processing flow of the brain neural network, including the frontal regions. One hundred unaveraged magnetoencephalography signals during the incongruent stimulus responses were analyzed with a time window of 200 ms in steps of 50 ms. In the 25–60-Hz band, cortical regions that showed significant current source density changes were examined for each time window. The three groups showed significantly decreased current source density, corresponding to neural activation, with temporal overlap along the fundamental cognitive information processing flow: sensory input system, executive control system, motor output system. Transient neural activations in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortexwere bilateral with left-side dominancy for normal controls, left-lateralized for nonhallucinators and right-lateralized for hallucinators. Our results suggest that the dysfunction in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was related to auditory hallucinations, while the information processing flow was unaffected in the schizophrenic subjects in the Stroop task.