Summary: By observing how patients approach conflicting information, researchers have created a potential clinical tool for schizophrenia. They discovered unique patterns that increase the patient’s tolerance to confusion by analyzing neural activity between the brain and the brain. These neurological markers may also aid in the evaluation of the efficacy of treatment.
The study, which used decision-making things to analyze members ‘ reaction to conflicting signals, reveals deficits in cognitive flexibility exclusive to dementia. This application will be improved in future research, providing a new method to assess and control executive dysfunction.
Important Facts:
- Awareness to Uncertainty: Schizophrenia people show heightened responsiveness to confusing details, impairing flexible thinking.
- Neurological Signs: Different patterns of brain activity between the brain and brain coincide with decision-making imbalances.
- Clinical Potential: These neurological habits could be used to identify and evaluate the effectiveness of dementia care.
Origin: Tufts University
Scientists have known for years that the typical symptoms of dementia, such as jumping to conclusions or trouble adjusting to new information, can be attributed to poor connection between the cerebral , brain and the brain, known as the body’s main switch.
By measuring brain cell activity between these two areas as participants completed confusing duties, a group of , Tufts University School of Medicine , and , Vanderbilt University School of Medicine , researchers found a way to use one’s sensitivity to confusion as a diagnostic tool.  ,
In a study  , published November 7 in the journal , Cell Reports Medicine, the experts show that people with dementia generate different neural habits when asked to make decisions based on conflicting information.
One of the first genetic tests to determine a person’s propensity for inflexible thinking is provided by the research, which also provides a new way to determine whether treatments are effective by tracking changes in these patterns.  ,
” Our goal was to draw a marker for executive function in schizophrenia, which only emerged when people were taxed by an uncertain task”, says physician-scientist , Michael Halassa, an associate professor of neuroscience and psychology at Tufts University School of Medicine who co-led the investigation with , Neil Woodward, a neurologist at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
We make decisions that are structured in nature as humans all the time, which means that we frequently have to bill for misinformation at various levels. Here is a way to begin assessing this trait.
The human mind has developed tools to “vote” on which information is most important when making decisions over the course of creation. For example, if you go to your favorite restaurant but your meal is n’t the quality you’ve come to expect, you may think the chef is out or having a bad night, but it does n’t prevent you from coming back.
A person with schizophrenia, on the other hand, may be unable to accept that their 20 or 30 previous trips to the cafe were positive and will no long want to go back.  ,
This behavior, according to animal studies, is caused by a lack of connectivity between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which aids in animal processing difficult inputs, and the mediodorsal brain, which is associated with conflict resolution and decision-making.
The research team conducted a number of mental and imaging assessments to better understand this neural circuitry in people in order to provide more precise tests for clients, using the dog information.  ,
The scientists asked about 40 study participants —a mixture of neurotypical individuals and patients with schizophrenia—to correctly choose a target’s location based on a sequence of cues that can be made more or less conflicting. Even when the conflict was high, performance was very good for healthy people.
When there was little conflict, those with schizophrenia displayed similar behavior to controls, but they also committed many more errors at levels that controls managed to tolerate.  ,
” When you look at the behavior, there’s an increased susceptibility to sensory noise, so the patients with schizophrenia do n’t do as well when things become more ambiguous”, said , Anna Huang, a research assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Vanderbilt and co-first author of the study.
These findings” could be used to assess a person’s ability to process conflicting information in perceptual as well as memory tasks by capturing thalamus and frontal cortex deficits in brain activity readouts.”
The researchers intend to test their findings by repurposing the techniques on a wider range of subjects who receive brain scans as they process ambiguous cues. Additionally, they intend to assign hierarchical duties to subjects, similar to the above restaurant example.
The study is a part of a larger study that the Halassa Lab is working on to connect neural activity to data that can be interpreted for use as a diagnostic tool.  ,
Also contributing to this study were , Ralf Wimmer, research assistant professor of neuroscience and co-first author, and , Norman Lam, postdoctoral fellow, from Tufts University School of Medicine, as well as , Sahil Suresh, a student in the MD/PhD Medical Scientist Training Program at Tufts University School of Medicine and the , Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Tufts University.  ,
Complete information on authors, funders, methodology, and conflicts of interest is available in the published paper. The authors are solely responsible for the content, which does not necessarily reflect the funders ‘ official opinions.  ,
About this research on schizophrenia
Author: Tara Pettinato
Source: Tufts University
Contact: Tara Pettinato – Tufts University
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
” A prefrontal thalamocortical readout for conflict-related executive dysfunction in schizophrenia” by Michael Halassa et al. Cell Reports Medicine
Abstract
A prefrontal thalamocortical readout for conflict-related executive dysfunction in schizophrenia
Executive dysfunction is a perceptive trait of schizophrenia and may contribute to core symptoms. Although mechanistic details critical for the development of treatment are still undetermined, dlPFC ( dorsolateral prefrontal cortex ) deficits have been linked to schizophrenia executive dysfunction.
We create a task that is designed to involve the human dlPFC and its interactions with the mediodorsal thalamus ( MD), using recent animal circuit studies.
When their attention is influenced by conflicting cues, we discover that those with schizophrenia exhibit selective performance deficits. In a larger independent schizophrenia cohort, task performance is related to lateralized MD-dlPFC functional connectivity, which reveals a neural readout that indicates susceptibility to conflict during working memory.
This MD-dlPFC network predicts switching behavior in healthy subjects who perform a probabilistic reversal task.
Our three independent experiments, which are presented in general, introduce putative biomarkers for executive function in schizophrenia and highlight animal circuit studies as sources of inspiration for the creation of clinically relevant readouts.
