The other individuals were matched with the patient group by age, sex, educational background, and predicted IQ.Īll of the participants underwent fMRI procedures while watching soundless color movies of natural scenes projected on a screen in the MRI scanner.
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The researchers in the recent study investigated the brain activity of 14 people with schizophrenia (age 24–59 years, mean = 44 years 43% females) and 17 other individuals (age 26–49 years, mean = 40 years 59% females).Īll the participants with schizophrenia were free of co-morbid psychiatric disorders and all were taking antipsychotic medications. These changes in blood flow are thought to reflect changes in neural activity, allowing researchers to identify which areas of the brain are activated during different mental tasks or stimuli. Edwin Fuller Torrey, a research psychiatrist specializing in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, described this study as being “among the more interesting recent studies of schizophrenia.”įunctional magnetic resonance imaging ( fMRI) is a brain imaging technique that uses magnetic fields to measure changes in blood flow to different areas of the brain.
The results of their study were published in the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin. Hidehiko Takahashi, a professor and chairperson of the Department of Psychiatry at TMDU, have elucidated the specific brain characteristics linked to the loosening of associations in schizophrenia. Now, with the help of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and natural language processing (NLP) techniques, researchers at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) led by Dr. In schizophrenia, typical connections in the brain are “loosened” and unrelated concepts are connected.Īlthough the theory of loosening of associations is accepted within the medical community, during the past 100 years since its inception, doctors have not found proof that there are specific brain characteristics that cause it. In the brains of individuals without schizophrenia, ideas, words, and phrases that share a common meaning or are related in some way (semantically related) are connected to form “semantic networks.” For example, some semantically related concepts to the word red could be green, fire engine or apple. Bleuler believed that the fundamental feature of schizophrenia was the “loosening of associations,” or lack of association between different ideas that resulted in disorganized thinking. The term schizophrenia was coined in 1908 by Eugen Bleuler, a Swiss psychiatrist. Schizophrenia is a mental health condition characterized by hallucinations, delusion (inaccurate interpretation of reality), and incoherent speech. This study provides the first biological evidence for the “loosening of associations” theory of schizophrenia and may potentially be used to understand the biological basis of other mental disorders as well as the creative processes of exceptionally talented individuals.
In people with schizophrenia, these semantic networks appeared to be disrupted, resulting in incoherent speech and delusions.The researchers report that in the brains of individuals without schizophrenia, mental concepts are organized into semantic domains and related concepts are connected, enabling coherent thought and speech.
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