Advanced Search

The American Journal of Psychiatry, VOL. 161, No. 3

Letter to the Editor | March 01, 2004

Learning and Brain Function in Schizophrenia

ROBERT PAUL LIBERMAN, M.D.

Am J Psychiatry 2004;161:580-580. 10.1176/appi.ajp.161.3.580

Article

References

text A A A

To the Editor: The positron emission tomography (PET) imaging study of deficit and nondeficit patients with schizophrenia and healthy volunteers conducted by Adrienne C. Lahti, M.D., and colleagues (1) revealed statistically significant mean differences among these groups in certain brain areas. However, two important points were not discussed by the authors, and these issues challenge the view that the authors’ work supports the hypotheses regarding putative brain areas relevant to the distinction between deficit and nondeficit schizophrenia.

1. Given their use of categorical differentiation of the three groups by diagnostic and negative symptom assessments and the statistically different mean differences among these groups, how do the authors explain the striking and graphic overlapping of the distributions of both pretask and posttask differences and the direction of changes, as displayed so clearly in their Figure 1?

2. The authors found no differences in the learning of the tone-discrimination task among the three conditions; all three groups reached high levels of accuracy in the training procedure. Therefore, to what compensatory brain mechanisms do the authors attribute these similarities in performance across groups in the face of the differences found in the hypothesized—but few—brain areas? If the learning and performance of these three groups were equally good, there would appear to be either 1) some compensatory processes or brain regions that function well to compensate for the hypothesis-driven impairments found in a few brain areas or 2) the hypothesis-driven brain areas that were found to be deficient in the schizophrenia groups were unrelated to the performance on the auditory recognition and discrimination tasks used by the authors.

For me, the most important findings from the study were those noted in these two points. A thoughtful exchange with the authors on the interpretation of their results would help to elucidate further the purported relations between learning and brain function, as measured by the particular PET imaging technique used by Dr. Lahti and her colleagues.

References

Lahti AC, Holcomb HH, Medoff DR, Weiler MA, Tamminga CA, Carpenter WT Jr: Abnormal patterns of regional cerebral blood flow in schizophrenia with primary negative symptoms during an effortful auditory recognition task. Am J Psychiatry 2001; 158:1797–1808[PubMed][CrossRef]

CME Activity

There is currently no quiz available for this resource. Please click here to go to the CME page to find another.

Submit a Comments

Please read the other comments before you post yours. Contributors must reveal any conflict of interest.
Comments are moderated and will appear on the site at the discertion of JBJS editorial staff.

* = Required Field

Comment Author(s)*(if multiple authors, separate names by comma)

Example: John Doe

Affiliation & Institution*

Comment Title*

Comment*

Cancel

Print
E-mail

Recipient(s) will receive an email with a link (good for 72 hours) to 'Learning and Brain Function in Schizophrenia' and do not need to have American Journal of Psychiatry account to access the content.
Your Name:*
Example: John Doe

Email Address:* CC Me:
Enter your valid email address. Example: jdoe@example.com

Recipient's Email Address:*
Separate multiple email address with semi-colons (up to 5).

Subject:* 's American Journal of Psychiatry: 'Learning and Brain Function in Schizophrenia'
Subject for your email.

Message:
(Optional, message will truncate at 1000 characters)

Processing your request... Please Wait...

Copyright © in the material you requested is held by The American Psychiatric Association (unless otherwise noted). This email ability is provided as a courtesy, and by using it you agree that you are requesting the material solely for personal, non-commercial use, and that it is subject to The American Psychiatric Association's Terms of Use. The information provided in order to email this topic will not be used to send unsolicited email, nor will it be furnished to third parties. Please refer to The American Psychiatric Association's Privacy Policy for further information.

Copyright © American Psychiatric Association. All rights reserved.
Share
Get Citation

ROBERT PAUL LIBERMAN; Learning and Brain Function in Schizophrenia. American Journal of Psychiatry. 2004 Mar;161(3):580-580.

Download citation file:

RIS (Zotero)

EndNote

BibTex

Medlars

ProCite

RefWorks

Reference Manager

Copyright © American Psychiatric Association. All rights reserved.
Reprints