Illness denial in schizophrenia spectrum disorders: a function of left hemisphere dominance.

ABSTRACT: Impaired illness awareness or anosognosia is a common, but poorly understood feature of schizophrenia that contributes to medication nonadherence and poor treatment outcomes. Here we present a functional imaging study to measure brain activity at the moment of illness denial. To accomplish this, participants with schizophrenia (n = 18) with varying degrees of illness awareness were confronted with their illness beliefs while undergoing functional MRI. To link structure with function, we explored the relationships among impaired illness awareness and brain activity during the illness denial task with cortical thickness. Impaired illness awareness was associated with increased brain activity in the left temporoparieto-occipital junction (TPO) and left medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) at the m

SUBMITTER: Gerretsen P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4268179 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature