Key result
Patients with schizophrenia showed significantly smaller prefrontal cortex activation than healthy controls during a Japanese shiritori task.
Why the study?
Does a Japanese 'shiritori' task using near-infrared spectroscopy show differences in cerebral oxygenated hemoglobin changes between patients with schizophrenia and healthy subjects?
Case-Control (n=70)
Does a Japanese 'shiritori' task using near-infrared spectroscopy show differences in cerebral oxygenated hemoglobin changes between patients with schizophrenia and healthy subjects?
Patients with schizophrenia exhibit hypofrontality during a verbal fluency task, which correlates with positive psychiatric symptoms and may serve as a diagnostic and prognostic tool.
Reduced prefrontal activation on NIRS shiritori supports hypofrontality in schizophrenia; leaves open diagnostic utility pending prospective validation.
Neuroimaging studies have been conducted using word generation tasks and have shown greater hypofrontality in patients with schizophrenia compared with healthy subjects. In this study, we compared the characteristics of oxygenated hemoglobin changes involved in both phonological and categorical verbal fluency between 35 outpatients with schizophrenia and 35 healthy subjects during a Japanese "shiritori" task using single-event-related near-infrared spectroscopy. During this task, the schizophrenic patients showed significantly smaller activation in the prefrontal cortex area than the controls. In addition, a significant positive correlation was obtained between oxygenated hemoglobin changes (prefrontal cortex area, inferior parietal area) and the severity of positive psychiatric symptoms. It is possible that hypofrontality of patients may be a diagnostic assistance tool for schizophrenia, and that the relationship between activation and positive syndrome scores may be of help in predicting functional outcome in patients.
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Fujiki et al. (2014) conducted a case-control in Schizophrenia (n=70). Schizophrenia vs. Healthy subjects was evaluated on Oxygenated hemoglobin changes in the prefrontal cortex during a Japanese shiritori task. Patients with schizophrenia showed significantly smaller prefrontal cortex activation than healthy controls during a Japanese shiritori task.
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