Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder with an array of diverse symptoms including extreme oddities in perception, thinking, action, sense of self and manner of relating to others. The term schizophrenia has Greek roots where “schizo” refers to split or crack and “phren” refers to the mind. Individuals with schizophrenia leap to conclusions and struggle to adapt to new information which can be traced back to ineffective communication between the thalamus and cerebral cortex.
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Researchers at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and Tufts University School of Medicine found a screening tool for schizophrenia where they assessed an individual’s sensitivity to unpredictable and uncontrollable situations by measuring the neural activity in an individual’s cerebral cortex and thalamus. They were searching for a bio-molecular indicator or a biological marker that acts as an identifier for impairment in executive functioning.
A research study portrayed that individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia have specific neural configurations when exposed to contrasting and inconsistent situations. This study resulted in an evaluation tool that assesses changes in these neural patterns and identifies individuals who are predisposed to rigid thinking. Humans can rationalize distorted information at varying levels by giving importance to only relevant details, which is difficult to comprehend and execute by individuals having schizophrenia.
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For example, if an individual goes to their most cherished dine-out location and the food served there is not congruent and up to the expectations of previous experiences, then that individual will rationalize the same situation thinking that the chef is not well or there is a change of cooking personnel, but it would not prevent one from visiting the place again. However, an individual having schizophrenia ignores the positive experiences of the past which is incongruent with their current unpleasant situation, and thus may decide to not drop by the same location.
Research studies conducted in animals have mentioned two regions of the brain namely – the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex responsible for interpreting complex stimuli and the mediodorsal thalamus which caters to cognitive functions like decision-making and conflict resolution. Researchers conducted a study incorporating 40 neurotypical clients and individuals having schizophrenia where the participants had to determine the whereabouts of an area.
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They were given contradicting and conflicting cues based on which they had to identify the location. Healthy individuals performed well even with high conflict, while those with schizophrenia made more errors as conflict increased, but portrayed similar results to controls at low conflict levels. Clients having schizophrenia are overly sensitive to distracting stimuli like light and sound and do not perform satisfactorily when ambiguous stimuli are provided to them.
The researchers aim to verify their results by reproducing the methods with a broader group of participants undergoing brain scans while processing ambiguous cues during hierarchical tasks, similar to the aforementioned restaurant example. This study is part of a larger research project by the Halassa Lab whose results can be used for clinical applications.
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