Project Summary

Deanna M. Barch, Ph.D., (Independent Investigator 2006) of Washington University, will study a promising cognitive marker for schizophrenia—a disturbance in working memory (WM) function (the ability to temporarily maintain and manipulate information). Research suggests that schizophrenia may be a neurodevelopmental disorder in which critical maturational events may fail to occur prior to or during puberty, which in turn leads to development of the disorder during or following puberty. A variety of lines of research have demonstrated that individuals at risk for schizophrenia demonstrate alterations in WM, and siblings at risk for schizophrenia who go on to develop the manifest illness demonstrate worse WM in childhood as compared to their siblings who do not go on to develop schizophrenia. Dr. Barch will explore if the developmental abnormalities in WM related brain activation among children at risk for schizophrenia reflect an arrested development of cognitive control processes, such that normal maturational changes in WM that occur around puberty are either developmentally delayed or never occur; and if abnormal development of WM in individuals at risk for schizophrenia may be reflected in a delayed or absent transition from transient to sustained processing and brain activation. Using fMRI, a continuous WM task (NBACK), and a design that allows for examination of functional brain activation to measure processes sustained throughout a WM task, Dr. Barch will examine pre-pubertal (ages 9-10) and peri-pubertal (ages 11-13_ siblings of individuals with schizophrenia. She predicts that the peri-pubertal high-risk siblings will show greater evidence of altered WM-related functional brain activation than the pre-pubertal high-risk siblings, and that the brain activation patterns of the peri-pubertal children will resemble those of pre-pubertal low risk siblings, consistent with the hypothesis of maturational delays or arrest in neural development.

Program Area: SCHIZOPHRENIA/PSYCHOTIC DISORDERS\Schizophrenia

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