Schizophrenia, Emotion, and Working Memory: AN fMRI study

Negative and non emotional interference effects on visual working memory was assessed in patients with schizophrenia while concurrently they underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and it was further tested whether they have an impairment in the capability of filtering emotonal distractors that are aversive (Anticevic, Repovs, Corlett, and Barch, 2011). Participants performed the delayed match-to-sample visual working memory task. Patients with schizophrenia had an enhanced response to distractors as compared to healthy control participants and this effect was held irrespective of the kind of distractor. Consistent with what was hypothesized,  the patients had diminished BOLD activity in prefrontal regions of the cortex, which is to be suggested to be associated with filtering. At more posterior areas, compared to healthy control subjects, the patients with schizophrenia exhibited enhanced activity related to nonemotional distractors (Anticevic et al., 2011).