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Schizophrenia notes...

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Farzana Uddin Elena Solodow 5/19/17 Schizophrenia Research Paper Analysis The research question addressed by this paper is if Schizophrenic patients can reach the same performance levels during spatial and verbal memory tasks as the healthy control group. In this study, twenty-two people were observed and given tasks that involved their working memory. Fifteen members were in the control group, and were healthy meaning they showed no evidence of schizophrenic symptoms. The rest were schizophrenic patients. The patients with schizophrenic symptoms were trained in order for them to do well as the control group.The authors of this research paper is particularly focusing on the part of the brain that has to do with the working memory such as the thalamus, prefrontal cortex and the basal ganglia. According to this research paper, they are testing the cerebral activations of schizophrenic patients during working memory tasks. For Schizophrenic patients there has been reports on increased or decreased prefrontal activation during working memory tasks, compared to the control group. The thalamus is reported to be linked to the psychotic symptoms of Schizophrenia according to this article. The hypothesis seems to be that schizophrenics would be able to reach the same performance level as healthy patients however they would use different strategies that would activate different cerebral parts of the brain. A positive of this this research paper is that the evidence using the fMRI scans of the Schizophrenic patients sheds light on the disorder and gives people an idea on how Schizophrenic patients use their memory. In addition, this study can be useful to not only

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Schizophrenic patients but to people with memory deficits such as people with Alzheimer's because the same tasks could be given to them and their brain activity can be recorded. According to the research paper, “Significant hyper activations were found for patients in the thalamus/basal ganglia for both VWM and SWM. In addition, for the spatial task, hyper activations were found in the cerebellum and in prefrontal regions.” (page 3). This may help other researches when testing Schizophrenic patients because they will be able to target these structures in their study. Another positive about this study is that the researchers included the inconsistencies of previous research, for example, in some studies, the thalamic and basal ganglia activations were only reported in Schizophrenic patients but not for the control group. This is a positive aspect of the research paper because it can guide future researchers on what not to do. Another positive of this study is that the patients were chosen randomly to receive an MRI, this benefits the study because it shows that there were no biases. In addition, this research paper analyzed the data of MRI and fMRI scans, so it further explained on its validity. They also included discrepancies in previous research such as hypoactivation of the thalamus, which is the complete opposite of what they found in their own studies, they explained that this might have been the result because the level of difficulty of the tasks could have been very low or very high. Furthermore, the authors analyzed the information and clearly identified their goal or reason for their study. They included images of the scans which is helpful to readers. In my opinion, I believe that the training the schizophrenic patients underwent might have interfered with the results. The schizophrenic patients should have been studied prior to being trained because that would help the researchers see whether or not the training helped them improve. There should have been two studies, one where the schizophrenic patients were not

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trained or told what to do, and another where they were trained, that way the results could be compared in order to see the differences of the types of activity in the brain prior to the training and also after the training. Another negative about this study, in my opinion is that people who are not knowledgeable on data and statistical information may not understand what the statistical evidence represents, so it should have been thoroughly explained. Furthermore, including suggestions such as using different cognitive strategies to reach same performance levels can help future research but they should have included examples of strategies, or better yet, use and explain the strategies in their study. There is no known cause for schizophrenia, however hypothesis and theories include things such as drugs and isolation. I think the research paper should have included these risks in their studies by looking in depth in the lives of the Schizophrenic patients in order to see if it can advance their research. This would also help to show how deep the disorder is for each Schizophrenic patient. That way the results are narrowed down. The results of the study showed that the patients with schizophrenia had more activation in the thalamus and basal ganglia during verbal working memory tasks and in the spatial working memory tasks, the same type of activity was shown but it extended all the way to the cerebellum. Also clusters, or increased activity were found in the gyrus but I think they should have explained what these clusters were, and how they were significant to the study. A suggestion to improve the research paper includes: instead of comparing the schizophrenic patients to the healthy control group they should give suggestions on how to improve the working memory in Schizophrenics. They could do this by studying different methods that stimulate the basal ganglia and thalamus, and which methods would be significantly helpful to Schizophrenics. This then can be used to improve the memory of

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Schizophrenics throughout the world. Also, the inclusion of Electroencephalography (EEG) might improve the study because it can measure the activity of the brain. I think the results of this method will help in recognizing the cognitive and psychosocial impairments in the patients. In addition using different methods would give more insight on the brain's activity for both the schizophrenic patients and the healthy control group. All in all, this research paper gave more insight on memory related tasks and how Schizophrenics can be able to reach the levels of performance of the control group. This research can be used in future studies because they will be able to use the suggestions made. There were many positive aspects of this study, as well as negative, but both could be used to improve new research.

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Works Cited Bor, Brunelin, Sappey-Marinier, Ibarrola, d’Amato, Suaud-Chagny, & Saoud (2011). Thalamus abnormalities during working memory in schizophrenia. An fMRI study. Schizophrenia Research, 125, 49 – 53....