Stroop performance in schizophrenic and bipolar patients : an fMRI study
Investigations of schizophrenic patients have reported impairments of attention, inhibition, and concept formation. The interference condition of the Stroop Color-Word test has been shown to reliably produce interference effects on response latency; however, the isolation of focal cortical brain regions associated with the network that underlies the interference process has been more difficult to characterize. Neuroimaging studies have identified the anterior cingulate cortex as a site responsible for mediating selective attention and inhibition as measured by the Stroop task, both of which have been shown to be altered in patients with schizophrenia. Cytoarchitectural studies suggest specific roles for the AAA and VOA subdivisions of the anterior cingulate, therefore, the examination of these subregions is key to understanding changes in activation associated with the completion of the Stroop interference task. The current study was undertaken to test the hypothesis that patients with schizophrenia would show a decrease in VOA activation during the performance of the interference condition of the Stroop task. Schizophrenic patients were not expected to exhibit a correlation of performance and signal intensity within the VOA region. To help elucidate whether any functional deficits detected were the result of the schizophrenic disease process, a group of bipolar patients was also included
Thesis, Dissertation, English, ©2002