Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging
Volume 182, Issue 1 , Pages 77-80, 30 April 2010

Cortico-subcortical underpinnings of narrative processing impairment in schizophrenia

  • Gianfranco Spalletta

      Affiliations

    • IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy
    • Department of Neuroscience, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Rome, Italy
    • ,
  • Ilaria Spoletini

      Affiliations

    • IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy
    • ,
  • Andrea Cherubini

      Affiliations

    • IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy
    • ,
  • Ivo Alex Rubino

      Affiliations

    • Department of Neuroscience, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Rome, Italy
    • ,
  • Alberto Siracusano

      Affiliations

    • Department of Neuroscience, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Rome, Italy
    • ,
  • Fabrizio Piras

      Affiliations

    • IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy
    • ,
  • Carlo Caltagirone

      Affiliations

    • IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy
    • Department of Neuroscience, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Rome, Italy
    • ,
  • Andrea Marini

      Affiliations

    • IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy
    • University of Udine, Udine, Italy
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author. Cattedra di Psicologia del Linguaggio, Università di Udine, Via Margreth, 3 - 33100 Udine (Italy). Tel.: +39 335 5393224.

Received 12 June 2009; received in revised form 30 October 2009; accepted 2 November 2009.

Abstract 

Cortical and subcortical gray matter volumes were correlated with a set of linguistic scores in a group of schizophrenia patients. Lexical informativeness was positively associated with the volume of the left frontal cortical and accumbal areas, while left hippocampal atrophy and right ventricle enlargement predicted increased production of semantic paraphasias. Global coherence impairment was predicted by left accumbal volume reduction and left ventricle enlargement. These data confirm that the brain structure of specific cortical and subcortal areas, as determined by magnetic resonance imaging, is related to the compromised semantic retrieval and language control in schizophrenia.

Keywords: Schizophrenia, Language, narrative, Gray matter volumes, MRI

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PII: S0925-4927(09)00248-0

doi:10.1016/j.pscychresns.2009.11.001

Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging
Volume 182, Issue 1 , Pages 77-80, 30 April 2010

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