Patterns of Cerebral Blood Flow in Schizophrenia

Positron emission tomography was used to study the relationship between rCBF and symptom profiles in 30 schizophrenic patients. Factor analysis confirmed that the symptoms segregated into three syndromes – psychomotor poverty, disorganisation, and reality distortion – described previously. Analysis of the correlations between syndrome scores and rCBF revealed that each syndrome was associated with a specific pattern of perfusion in paralimbic and association cortex, and in related subcortical nuclei. The study confirmed predictions that psychomotor poverty and disorganisation are associated with altered perfusion at different loci in the pre-frontal cortex, and reality distortion with altered perfusion in the medial temporal lobe. The perfusion patterns suggest that the abnormalities of brain function underlying each of the three syndromes are not confined to single loci, but involve distributed neuronal networks.