Page 331 - merged

S076-4

Neural Signature for Swearword in Schizophrenia: Fmri Study

Bum-seok Jeong

1Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology,
Daejeon, Korea

Background/Objective: Attention deficit is commonly reported in schizophrenia, and altered
salience on stimuli can be one reason of psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia. Therefore, aberrant
function in the brain circuit of attention on negative emotional cues may relate to the symptoms of
schizophrenia.

Method: In total, 40 schizophrenia patients and 20 controls were participated. Severity of symptoms
in schizophrenia was evaluated with Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale and the Clinical Global
Impression-Schizophrenia scale. During the two fMRI sessions, subjects were asked to focus
alternating swear (high-emotion) words and neutral (low-emotion) words. The general linear model
was applied to evaluate the brain activities during the fMRI tasks.

Result: The dorsolateral and dorsomedial cortex that are related to selective attention were activated
in both schizophrenia and controls during the task (corrected p < 0.05). Also, the activities of these
regions were greater in controls than in schizophrenia (corrected p < 0.05).

Conclusion: These lines of translational findings point to the need for further efforts to identify
effective pharmacotherapy targeting emotional perception, or negative valence, in patients with
schizophrenia.

Reference: Functional and anatomical connectivity abnormalities in left inferior frontal gyrus in
schizophrenia. Human Brain Mapping 2009;30:4138–4151.