title: Evidence for corticostriatal dysfunction during cognitive skill learning in adolescent siblings of patients with childhood-onset schizophrenia.
abstract: Patients with schizophrenia perform poorly on cognitive skill learning tasks. This study is the first to investigate the neural basis of impairment in cognitive skill learning in first-degree adolescent relatives of patients with schizophrenia. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare activation in 16 adolescent siblings of patients with childhood-onset schizophrenia (COS) and 45 adolescent controls to determine whether impaired cognitive skill learning in individuals with genetic risk for schizophrenia was associated with specific patterns of neural activation. The siblings of patients with COS were severely impaired on the Weather Prediction Task (WPT) and showed a relative deactivation in frontal regions and in the striatum after extensive training on the WPT compared with controls. These differences were not accounted for by performance differences in the 2 groups. The results suggest that corticostriatal dysfunction may be part of the liability for schizophrenia.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; dwagshal@memory.ucsf.edu.
authors.forename: Dana
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wagshal
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA;
authors.forename: Barbara Jean
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Knowlton
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA;
authors.forename: Nanthia Ananda
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Suthana
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA;
authors.forename: Jessica Rachel
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Cohen
authors.affiliation: Departments of Psychology and Neurobiology, Imaging Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX;
authors.forename: Russel Alan
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Poldrack
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences , University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA.
authors.forename: Susan Yost
authors.initials: SY
authors.lastname: Bookheimer
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences , University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA.
authors.forename: Robert Martin
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Bilder
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences , University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA.
authors.forename: Robert Franklin
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: Asarnow
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D017668:Age of Onset; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002648:Child; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000209:etiology / Q000235:genetics / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D017072:Neostriatum / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000150:complications / Q000235:genetics / Q000503:physiopathology*; D035781:Siblings
keywords: cognitive skill learning; fMRI; genetic risk; striatal dysfunction