NRSC 4132 Blog

Have you ever spoken to someone who was just a little "off" and wondered if their brain was wired differently than yours? What about yourself, have you ever speculated that your own brain may have missed a few connections? While there may be some differences between how your brain functions compared to some average joe down the street, it's likely that these differences are not significant. In general most neurotypical people have similar connections between the different brain regions. One group of atypicals, however, has shown disparities in the active connections when performing various tasks. This group is composed of those with Schizophrenic symptoms.
While there have been a few studies conducted concerning the functional connections in select brain regions for Schizophrenics, there has been little conclusive evidence due to their specific nature. One study by Solomon et al. 2011, attempted to encompass all of this information by analyzing the entire brain while having groups of people perform several cognitive tests and also resting. To confirm which brain regions were activated, each subject underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing these tasks. The cognitive tests performed by the subjects included n-back memory tasks along with a verb generation task. During the n-back memory task, the participants were asked to identify when an image matched one they had seen in a sequence n-number of images before. This is very similar if not identical to some training sessions in popular phone apps designed to improve cognitive function such as Memory Trainer. In the verb generation tasks, the participants were given a series of nouns and must think of a verb that corresponds with it. All participants were a mixture of male and female right handed individuals between the ages of 19 and 39 years old. Of the group of schizophrenic participants involved in cognitive testing, all were patients at the Tirat Hacarmel Mental Health Center. Each of these patients had been medicated with either haloperidol or an atypical antipsychotic drug and had been for an extended period of time.

Despite the fact that both the control and experimental (schizophrenic) groups were performing the same tasks, there were disparities between the overall brain regions excited by these tests. The brain images from the schizophrenic group were averaged along with those from the control group and compared. The resulting data shows disparities between the various groups for each task. The main regions of disparity during the n-back task were the superior frontal gyrus, central sulcus precuneus, inferior parietal lobe, inferior temporal gyrus and the fusiform gyrus. The disparity between neurotpicals and schizophrenics was even higher for the verb generation tasks and included the regions of the premotor cortex, post central sulcus and gyrus, intraparietal sulcus and the anterior cingulate gyrus. Not only does Solomon et al. show that there may be different connections in the brains of those with chronic schizophrenic episodes but they are many and varied.

Solomon et al. proves that not only is it possible to have your brain wired differently, but that it happens in real life with groups of those with atypical neuronal and psychological activity. Perhaps the next time you feel someone is a little off, remember that there is a strong possibility that their brain just uses different connections than yours.

Source:
Salomon, R., Bleich-Cohen, M., Hahamy-Dubossarsky, A., Dinstien, I., Weizman, R., Poyurovsky, M., . . . Malach, R. (2011). Global functional connectivity deficits in schizophrenia depend on behavioral state. Journal of Neuroscience, 31(36), 12972-12981. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2987-11.2011