Anterior cingulate activation during Stroop task performance: a PET to MRI coregistration study of individual patients with schizophrenia.
OBJECTIVE
The authors used single-subject functional imaging analyses to 1) corroborate the findings of anterior cingulate hypoperfusion during an attentional task in schizophrenia and 2) examine whether anterior cingulate activation is associated with underlying morphology.


METHODS
Five healthy subjects and six patients with schizophrenia underwent positron emission tomography scanning while they performed the Stroop task. The medial-frontal lobes were masked out for analysis, and activation peaks were individually coregistered to each subject's magnetic resonance imaging scan.


RESULTS
Healthy subjects showed activations in both limbic and paralimbic anterior cingulate regions. Patients with schizophrenia showed only paralimbic activations, and these were apparent only in patients having a paracingulate sulcus.


CONCLUSIONS
These findings suggest that 1) patients with schizophrenia have limbic-anterior cingulate hypoperfusion during attentional tasks and 2) paralimbic activation is associated with underlying morphology.
Yücel
Murat
M
Cognitive Neuropsychiatry Research and Academic Unit, Department of Psychiatry, Howard Florey Institute, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. murat@neuro.mhri.edu.au
Pantelis
Christos
C
Stuart
Geoffrey W
GW
Wood
Stephen J
SJ
Maruff
Paul
P
Velakoulis
Dennis
D
Pipingas
Andrew
A
Crowe
Simon F
SF
Tochon-Danguy
Henri J
HJ
Egan
Gary F
GF
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002908:Chronic Disease; D003118:Color Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral / Q000502:physiology; D006179:Gyrus Cinguli / Q000098:blood supply / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008032:Limbic System / Q000098:blood supply / Q000503:physiopathology; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009044:Motor Cortex / Q000098:blood supply / Q000503:physiopathology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012016:Reference Values; D012039:Regional Blood Flow / Q000502:physiology; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D014055:Tomography, Emission-Computed