Abstract
Patients with schizophrenia undergo changes in brain plasticity. In the present study, we characterized motor cortical-striatal plasticity in such patients. Compared with the potentiation following high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation in the control group, the patients demonstrated impaired plasticity of corticostriatal motor-evoked potentials recorded from hand muscles. Notably, the loss of cortical plasticity was correlated with impaired motor learning in a rotary pursuit task. Moreover, the loss of plasticity was correlated with the symptoms of schizophrenia. The results suggest that the progression of schizophrenia is accompanied by altered cortical plasticity and functioning.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Program of Medical Science of Ningbo Municipality, Zhejiang Province, China (2013A23), the Ningbo Municipal Innovation Team of Life Science and Health, Zhejiang Province, China (2015C110026), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81501164 and 81611130224). We thank our laboratory members for their support.
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Dongsheng Zhou, Feng Pang, Shiyan Liu, Ying Shen, Lingjiang Liu and Zezhong Fang have contributed equally to this work.
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Zhou, D., Pang, F., Liu, S. et al. Altered Motor-Striatal Plasticity and Cortical Functioning in Patients with Schizophrenia. Neurosci. Bull. 33, 307–311 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12264-016-0079-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12264-016-0079-9