Schizophrenia.
The observed patterns of connectivity indicate that core regions of the frontal-parietal net- work involved in both working memory and selective attention play a crucial role in the filtering of information by modulating the processing of information in visual areas.
Abstract
non-predictive a single Gabor was and participants the orientation the in that At the beginning of each block participants were instructed to either encode the flickering or non-flickering patches (targets) whose could be cued or uncued. In 80 % of trials, a target was probed during retrieval. Data analysis in Brain Voyager included standard data preprocessing. Additionally, a mul-tiscale curvature driven cortex based alignment procedure was used to minimise macro-anatomical variability between subjects. Subsequently, functional data were analysed using a random-effects multi-subject general linear model (p<0.05, FDR corrected). Functional connectivity analysis was performed using Granger Causality Mapping. Results: Participants were able to preferentially encode task-relevant information in all four conditions. During encoding, they showed activa- tion in a distributed network of fronto-parietal and visual areas. For sali-ent compared to non-salient distractors, we observed increased functional connectivity between attention-related areas and extrastriate visual cortex. This difference was more pronounced for trials with a predictive compared to non-predictive cue. Discussion: We were able to map the cerebral networks responsible for determining the contents of working memory. The observed patterns of connectivity indicate that core regions of the frontal-parietal net- work involved in both working memory and selective attention play a crucial role in the filtering of information by modulating the processing of information in visual areas. Our current findings provide the basis for studying the neurophysiological underpinnings of the interaction between impairments of working memory and selective attention in schizophrenia.