Schizophrenia is associated with a pattern of spatial working memory deficits consistent with cortical disinhibition.

ABSTRACT: Schizophrenia is associated with severe cognitive deficits, including impaired working memory (WM). A neural mechanism that may contribute to WM impairment is the disruption in excitation-inhibition (E/I) balance in cortical microcircuits. It remains unknown, however, how these alterations map onto quantifiable behavioral deficits in patients. Based on predictions from a validated microcircuit model of spatial WM, we hypothesized two key behavioral consequences: i) increased variability of WM traces over time, reducing performance precision; and ii) decreased ability to filter out distractors that overlap with WM representations. To test model predictions, we studied N=27 schizophrenia patients and N=28 matched healthy comparison subjects (HCS) who performed a spatial WM task designed to t

SUBMITTER: Starc M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5901719 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature