Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 8, 2026
09:41
Functional Transcranial Doppler Ultrasound for Monitoring Cerebral Blood Flow
Published on: March 15, 2021
Association between two distinct executive tasks in schizophrenia: a functional transcranial Doppler sonography study
Deborah Feldmann1, Daniel Schuepbach, Bettina von Rickenbach
1Psychiatric University Hospital Zürich, Lenggstrasse 31, 8032 Zürich, Switzerland. feldmanndeborah@access.unizh.ch
BMC Psychiatry
|May 26, 2006
Summary
Schizophrenia impairs executive functions, affecting planning and rule learning. This study links task performance and brain blood flow in schizophrenia patients, highlighting lateral hemisphere involvement.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Psychiatry
Background:
- Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder characterized by executive functioning deficits.
- Executive functions are crucial cognitive processes assessed by planning (Stockings of Cambridge - SOC) and rule learning (Wisconsin Card Sorting Test - WCST) tasks.
- Understanding the neural correlates of these deficits is vital for schizophrenia research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the association between performance in distinct phases of the SOC and WCST.
- To examine the relationship between these cognitive tasks and cerebral blood flow velocity (MFV) in chronic schizophrenia patients.
- To explore the impact of task difficulty and specific task phases on executive function performance and brain perfusion.
Main Methods:
- Functional transcranial Doppler sonography (fTCD) was used to measure bilateral MFV in the middle cerebral artery (MCA) and anterior cerebral artery (ACA).
- Twenty-two schizophrenia patients and 20 healthy controls performed SOC and WCST during fTCD measurements.
- Performance was analyzed across different SOC phases (planning, execution) and WCST components (set maintenance, set shifting).
Main Results:
- In patients, slowed movement execution in SOC correlated with slowed set maintenance in WCST.
- Healthy subjects showed faster planning and execution linked to better set shifting in WCST.
- A significant positive correlation was found between MCA MFV during movement execution and WCST performance in patients.
Conclusions:
- Schizophrenia is associated with abnormal performance patterns and brain perfusion during executive function tasks.
- Executive function deficits in schizophrenia appear to have pathological correlates predominantly in the brain's lateral hemispheres.
- Functional transcranial Doppler sonography (fTCD) shows potential for assessing brain perfusion in schizophrenia.
