RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Aberrant prefrontal beta oscillations predict episodic memory encoding deficits in schizophrenia
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 061291
DO 10.1101/061291
A1 Federica Meconi
A1 Sarah Anderl-Straub
A1 Heidelore Raum
A1 Michael Landgrebe
A1 Berthold Langguth
A1 Karl-Heinz T. Bäuml
A1 Simon Hanslmayr
YR 2016
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/06/29/061291.abstract
AB Verbal episodic memory is one of the core cognitive functions affected in patients suffering from schizophrenia (SZ). Although this verbal memory impairment in SZ is a well-known finding, our understanding about its underlying neurophysiological mechanisms is rather scarce. Here we address this issue by recording brain oscillations during a memory task in a sample of healthy controls and patients suffering from SZ. Brain oscillations represent spectral fingerprints of specific neurocognitive operations and are therefore a promising tool to identify neurocognitive mechanisms that are affected by SZ. Healthy controls showed a prominent suppression of left prefrontal beta oscillatory activity during successful memory formation, which replicates several previous oscillatory memory studies. In contrast, patients failed to exhibit such left prefrontal beta power suppression. Utilizing a new topographical pattern similarity approach, we further demonstrate that the degree of similarity between a patient's beta power decrease to that of the controls reliably predicted memory performance. This relationship between beta power decreases and memory was such that the patients' memory performance improved as they showed a more similar topographical beta desynchronization pattern compared to that of healthy controls. These findings suggest that left prefrontal beta power suppression (or lack thereof) during memory encoding is a possible biomarker for the observed encoding impairments in SZ in verbal memory. This lack of left prefrontal beta power decreases might indicate a specific semantic processing deficit of verbal material in patients with schizophrenia.