Marker for Poor Memory in Schizophrenia Patients Identified

That is the title of today's blog. "Possible key to understanding and treating cognitive symptoms of the disease.
A new study has identified a pattern of brain activity that may be a sign of memory problems in people with schizophrenia. The biomarker, which the researchers believe may be the first of its kind, is an important step toward understanding and treating one of the most devastating symptoms of schizophrenia. The study, led by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI), was published today in the journal Biological Psychiatry. While schizophrenia typically causes hallucinations and delusions, many people with the disorder also have cognitive deficits, including problems with short- and long-term memory." I am able to work OK although I have a hard time remembering things I have to do.  My long-term memory they tell me you bought this seven years ago I do not remember buying it.
The article goes on to say: "'Of all the symptoms linked to schizophrenia, memory issues may have the greatest impact on quality of life, as they can make it difficult to hold down a job and maintain social relationships,' said first author Jared X. Van Snellenberg, PhD, assistant professor of clinical psychology (in psychiatry) at CUMC and research scientist in the division of translational imaging at NYSPI. 'Unfortunately, we know very little about the cause of these memory problems and have no way to treat them.' Researchers have long hypothesized that memory problems in schizophrenia stem from disruptions in the brain’s dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). This area of the brain plays a key role in working memory–the system for temporarily storing and managing information required to carry out complex cognitive tasks. However, previous studies, which used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare DLPFC activation in healthy individuals and those with schizophrenia while taking memory tests, have not shown clear differences. Dr. Van Snellenberg hypothesized that the studies failed to detect a difference because the memory tests did not have enough levels of difficulty. In 2014 he and his colleagues designed a computerized test that includes eight levels of increasingly difficulty in a single working memory task." It would be great if they can find something to help with memory problems. This tranlational imaging sounds like it might work on this.
The article ends: "Researchers have long hypothesized that memory problems in schizophrenia stem from disruptions in the brain’s dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). This area of the brain plays a key role in working memory–the system for temporarily storing and managing information required to carry out complex cognitive tasks. Image is for illustrative purposes only. In the current study, 45 healthy controls and 51 schizophrenia patients, including 21 who were not taking antipsychotic medications, were given the eight-level memory test while undergoing fMRI imaging. As expected, the healthy controls demonstrated a gradual increase in DLPFC activation, followed by a gradual decrease in activation as the task gets harder. But in both medicated and unmedicated schizophrenia patients, the overall response was significantly weaker, with the weakest response occurring in those who had the most difficulty with the memory task. The researchers believe this may be the first time a brain signal in DLPFC has been directly linked to working memory performance in patients with schizophrenia. 'Our findings provide evidence that the DLPFC is compromised in patients with schizophrenia,' said Dr. Van Snellenberg. 'What they don’t tell us is why, which is something we ultimately hope to figure out. In the meantime, we now have a specific target for treatment, and a new way to measure whether a treatment is working.'"The why is an important step in getting help with this problem.  I hope they can find the why I sure would like to remember things.

Scans Show People Have a Brain 'Fingerprint,' Researchers Say

That is the title of this article I am writing about. "People appear to have their own individual fingerprint of brain activity, one that might be used to predict the risk of mental illness and see the effects of medical treatment, researchers reported on Monday.  The pattern of brain activity is consistent — and the research team at Yale University could turn it around and identify specific individuals based on the pattern.  "The patterns were different enough that we were able to pick people out of a crowd regardless of what people were doing," said Emily Finn, a graduate student who led work on the study.  They even used it to show differences in what's called fluid intelligence — quick thinking and problem solving.  'We demonstrate that it is possible, with near-perfect accuracy in many cases, to identify an individual from a large group of subjects solely on the basis of his or her connectivity matrix,' Finn's group, led by Todd Constable, director of MRI research at Yale, wrote in the journal Nature Neuroscience. The team used data from multiple functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans of 126 volunteers. They're all taking part in a bigger study called the Human Connectome Project, which is looking to see just how different parts of the brain work together." This sounds promising.  If they can help people with mental illness that would be great.
The article goes on to say: "They found a distinct pattern of activity in each person, which held true when they were doing something and when they were just sitting there. It's not so much showing that one brain region is connecting to another as showing that two or more regions are functioning in synchrony at certain times, Finn said. 'It's definitely not easy to see,' she said. The effect wasn't visual, but could be seen in the streams of data coming from the scans. 'It was about the pattern,' she said. 'It wasn't necessarily that people had overall strong connection strength or overall weak connection strength.' It's step towards applying the benefits of fMRI to individuals. 'In the past, in an fMRI you would image a bunch of people doing the same thing and you would average together the data from many people and see how the brain lights up,' she said. 'The dogma has always been that it is hard to get any meaningful information from a single person's scan because this method is so noisy and crude.'  The Yale team's approach found that you could, in fact, find out quite a bit about an individual from his or her fMRI.  'Characteristic connectivity patterns were distributed throughout the brain, but the frontoparietal network emerged as most distinctive,' the team wrote.  These are regions associated with fluid intelligence, Finn said." They can tell from the brain how it is working. All I have seem of MRI's is brain lighting up when we are using certain parts.
The article ends with: "These two lobes, the prefrontal and parietal, are some of the most recently evolved parts of the brain,' she said. They're linked with attention and memory. Not that this means brain scans will replace IQ tests. 'It is a lot easier to give someone an IQ test than to put them in a scanner,' Finn said. 'The real potential in this is not predicting IQ per se, but thing that are harder to predict in a test like who is going to go on to develop mental illness,' she said. 'Maybe we could find a way to predict it so we can intervene and prevent mental illness,' Finn added.  There aren't drugs or treatments that can do that now but there may be in years to come, she said.  It might be useful in predicting or measuring someone's response to drug education programs, or to other therapies, she added."  It would be nice to see if they can predict when people are going to get mental illness.  If they can stop before people go through hell that would be great. I know this will take years before anything can be done.  They do not have medication that helps everyone right now.