Kayako Matsuo1, Annabel S.-H. Chen2,
Su-Chun Huang1, Chih-Min Liu3, Chen-Chung Liu3,
Hai-Go Hwu3, Wen-Yih Isaac Tseng1
1Center for Optoelectronic
Biomedicine, National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan; 2Division
of Psychology, School of Humanities & Social Sciences, Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore; 3Department of Psychiatry,
National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
Working memory dysfunction is a core cognitive symptom in schizophrenia. We applied a cerebro-cerebellar verbal working memory (VWM) model using fMRI to examine the cortico-cerebellar-thalamo-cortico-circuit (CCTCC) in patients with schizophrenia and their matched healthy controls. We observed overall greater activity in patients than healthy controls during VWM. In particular, patients showed a significantly larger extent of activations but of similar intensity values within relevant ROIs. We also found a pattern shift from left to bilateral activations in cortico-cerebellar regions. These findings suggested a compensatory system to cope with a functionally weakened VWM network in schizophrenia.
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