Meta-analysis of 41 Functional Neuroimaging Studies of Executive Function in Schizophrenia

By Michael J. Minzenberg, Angela R. Laird, Sarah M. Thelen, Cameron S. Carter, David C. Glahn. Archives of General Psychiatry, 2009

1,128 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Context: Prefrontal cortical dysfunction is frequently reported in schizophrenia. It remains unclear whether this represents the coincidence of several prefrontal region- and process-specific impairments or a more unitary dysfunction in a superordinate cognitive control network. Whether these impairments are properly considered reflective of hypofrontality vs hyperfrontality remains unresolved. Objectives: To test whether common nodes of the cognitive control network exhibit altered activity across functional neuroimaging studies of executive cognition in schizophrenia and to evaluate the direction of these effects. Data Sources: PubMed database. Study Selection: Forty-one English-language, peer-reviewed articles published prior to February 2007 were included. All reports used functional neuroimaging during executive function performance by adult patients with schizophrenia and reported whole-brain analyses in standard stereotactic space. Tasks primarily included the delayed match-to-sample, N-back, AX-CPT, and Stroop tasks. Data Extraction: Activation likelihood estimation modeling reported activation maxima as the center of a 3-dimensional gaussian function in the meta-analysis, with statistical thresholding and correction for multiple comparisons. Data Synthesis: In within-group analyses, healthy controls and patients activated a similarly distributed cortical-subcortical network, prominently including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), ventrolateral PFC, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and thalamus. In between-group analyses, patients showed reduced activation in the left dorsolateral PFC, rostral/dorsal ACC, left thalamus (with significant co-occurrence of these areas), and inferior/ posterior cortical areas. Increased activation was observed in several midline cortical areas. Activation within groups varied modestly by task. Conclusions: Healthy adults and schizophrenic patients activate a qualitatively similar neural network during executive task performance, consistent with the engagement of a general-purpose cognitive control network, with critical nodes in the dorsolateral PFC and ACC. Nevertheless, patients with schizophrenia show altered activity with deficits in the dorsolateral PFC, ACC, and mediodorsal nucleus of the thalamus. Increases in activity are evident in other PFC areas, which could be compensatory in nature.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Psychiatry and Mental health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/44edfbae87c9621a65fba03cdfaa758cff35d409

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Citations in the corpus

Investigating the Functional Heterogeneity of the Default Mode Network Using Coordinate-Based Meta-Analytic Modeling (2009, neutral): “…brain function (Decety and Lamm, 2007; Costafreda et al., 2008; Chan et al., 2009; Soros et al., 2009) and mental disorders (Menzies et al., 2008; Minzenberg et al., 2009; Ragland et al., 2009)andisusefulingeneratingnewhypotheses(Priceetal.,2005,Laird…”
Meta-analytic evidence for a superordinate cognitive control network subserving diverse executive functions (2012, background): “Executive functions were defined as processes that are required in order to regulate or guide other cognitive processes in order to support goal-directed behavior (Minzenberg et al., 2009).”
Modelling neural correlates of working memory: A coordinate-based meta-analysis (2011, neutral): “, 2011; Yoshida and Kuroda, 2008) such as schizophrenia (Glahn et al., 2005; Kim et al., 2010; Minzenberg et al., 2009; Nejad et al., 2011; Scheuerecker et al., 2008), hepatic encephalitis (Weissenborn et al.”
Disrupted Modularity and Local Connectivity of Brain Functional Networks in Childhood-Onset Schizophrenia (2010, neutral): “…fMRI, almost all of the brain areas that show decreased regional clustering or increased efficiency in COS – including the insula, the ventral occipital lobe, and the inferior parietal lobule – have been previous implicated in schizophrenia (Glahn et al., 2005; Minzenberg et al., 2009).”
Default mode network activity in schizophrenia studied at resting state using probabilistic ICA. (2012, background): “Firstly, we find several differences in prefrontal cortices, areas that have repeatedly been associated with schizophrenia pathology and its resulting cognitive impairments (Minzenberg et al., 2009).”
A cognitive neuroscience based computerized battery for efficient measurement of individual differences: Standardization and initial construct validation (2009, background): “It has been studied extensively with functional neuroimaging, and demonstrated to recruit dorsolateral prefrontal regions (Braver et al., 1997; Ragland et al., 1997; 2002; Rodriguez-Jimenez et al., 2009; Minzenberg et al., 2009).”
Minimizing Within-Experiment and Within-Group Effects in Activation Likelihood Estimation Meta-Analyses (2011, background): “, 2009; Turkeltaub and Coslett, 2010], or to compare activity between processes or populations [Caspers et al., 2010; Chouinard and Goodale, 2010; Maisog et al., 2008; Minzenberg et al., 2009; Spreng et al., 2010; Vytal and Hamann, 2009].”
Cognitive dysfunction in psychiatric disorders: characteristics, causes and the quest for improved therapy (2012, background): “Cognitive deficits observed in schizophrenia have long been ascribed to reduced activation of the dorsolateral PFC (known as hypofrontality) but many cortical and subcortical structures are also affected, with a complex pattern of region-dependent hypo- or hyperactivatio”