Neural activation abnormalities during self-referential processing in schizophrenia: An fMRI study

Impairments in self-awareness contribute to disability in schizophrenia. Studies have revealed activation abnormalities in schizophrenia in cortical midline structures associated with self-reference. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare activation throughout the brain in people with schizophrenia and healthy controls (Kelly et al., 2002) while they indicated whether trait adjectives described attributes of themselves, their mother or a former president of the United States. Blood oxygenation level dependent signal in each condition was compared to resting fixation. Patients were less likely and slower to endorse positive self-attributes, and more likely and quicker to endorse negative self-attributes than controls. Activation abnormalities reported previously in cortical midline structures were again noted. In addition, patients showed greater signal increases in frontal, temporal gyri and insula, and smaller signal decreases in posterior regions than healthy controls when thinking about themselves. Group differences were less evident when subjects were thinking about their mothers and tended to go in the opposite direction when thinking about a president. Many of the areas showing abnormality have been shown in other studies to differ between patients and controls in structure and with other activation paradigms. We suggest that general neuropathology in schizophrenia alters the neural system configurations associated with self-representation.