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Neuropsychological variability, symptoms, and brain imaging in chronic schizophrenia

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Abstract

We examined variability in performance on widely-used neuropsychological Wechsler tests of intelligence and memory in a large sample of persons with chronic schizophrenia, a subset of whom had also undergone prior studies of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the orbital frontal cortex (OFC) gray matter and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) of the cingulum bundle (CB) and the uncinate fasiculus (UF) white matter. In comparison to controls, persons with schizophrenia showed lower scores across neuropsychological tests, with most pronounced drops in processing speed and immediate memory, in relation to oral reading. For patients, greater declines in intelligence and memory each correlated with reduced CB white matter fractional anisotropy and reduced OFC gray matter, respectively. However, only memory decline correlated with severity of negative symptoms. Taken together, these data raise the intriguing question as to whether communication and motivational deficits expressed in negative symptoms may contribute to the relationship of auditory memory decline and OFC volume observed in this patient sample.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Institute of Health (K02 MH 01110 and R01 MH 50747 to Martha E. Shenton, R01 MH 40799 and P50 080272 to Robert W. McCarley, RO1 MH 63360 to and Margaret Niznikiewicz, R03 MH068464-01 to Marek Kubicki), National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (Marek Kubicki), the Department of Veterans Affairs Merit Awards (Martha E. Shenton, James J. Levitt and Margaret Niznikiewicz, Paul G. Nestor and Robert W. McCarley), and the Department of Veterans Affairs Schizophrenia Center (Robert W. McCarley). This work is also part of the National Alliance for Medical Image Computing (NAMIC), funded by the National Institutes of Health through the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research, Grant U54 EB005149 (Martha E. Shenton and Marek Kubicki).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA, 02125-3393, USA

    Paul G. Nestor

  2. Clinical Neuroscience Division, Laboratory of Neuroscience, Boston VA Healthcare System-Brockton Division, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Brockton, MA, USA

    Paul G. Nestor, Marek Kubicki, Motoaki Nakamura, Margaret Niznikiewicz, James J. Levitt, Martha E. Shenton & Robert W. McCarley

  3. Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Marek Kubicki, Motoaki Nakamura, James J. Levitt & Martha E. Shenton

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  1. Paul G. Nestor
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  2. Marek Kubicki
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Correspondence to Paul G. Nestor.

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Nestor, P.G., Kubicki, M., Nakamura, M. et al. Neuropsychological variability, symptoms, and brain imaging in chronic schizophrenia. Brain Imaging and Behavior 7, 68–76 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-012-9193-0

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