Project Summary

R. Alison Adcock, M.D., Ph.D., (Young Investigator 2006) of the University of California, San Francisco, aims to use fMRI to study the role of the hippocampus in memory impairment in schizophrenia. Symptoms of schizophrenia respond to dopamine-blocking drugs and dopamine is important to long-term memory formation involving the hippocampus. Although hippocampal impairment has been implicated in schizophrenia, little is known about dopaminergic midbrain function or dysfunction. In a prior study, Dr. Adcock demonstrated that the level of activation in dopamine-rich midbrain and hippocampal regions triggered by a reward incentive correlated robustly with the successful encoding of a long-term memory. This is the first evidence of a memory-correlated functional relationship between these two regions. But it is unknown whether this important relationship is intact in patients with schizophrenia. Indeed, Dr. Adcock hypothesizes that the well-described hippocampal impairments seen in schizophrenia derive from midbrain dysfunction. To test this hypothesis, she will perform fMRI during the same reward-motivated memorization task with patients having schizophrenia and with matched controls. She predicts that patients will have less reward processing in midbrain responses compared to controls and that midbrain activation in patients will correlate with hippocampal activation and with memory, as in healthy subjects.

Program Area: SCHIZOPHRENIA/PSYCHOTIC DISORDER\Schizophrenia

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