Bibliographic entry:

Russell TA, Rubia K, Bullmore ET, Soni W, Suckling J, Brammer MJ, Simmons A, Williams SC, Sharma T (2000) “Exploring the social brain in schizophrenia: left prefrontal underactivation during mental state attribution.” Am J Psychiatry 157(12):2040-2

Abstract:

Evidence suggests that patients with schizophrenia have a deficit in "theory of mind," i.e., interpretation of the mental state of others. The authors used functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to investigate the hypothesis that patients with schizophrenia have a dysfunction in brain regions responsible for mental state attribution.

Mean brain activation in five male patients with schizophrenia was compared to that in seven comparison subjects during performance of a task involving attribution of mental state.

During performance of the mental state attribution task, the patients made more errors and showed less blood-oxygen-level-dependent signal in the left inferior frontal gyrus.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first functional MRI study to show a deficit in the left prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia during a socioemotional task.

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