Neuropsychiatric aspects of schizophrenia

Cognitive and affective deficits are prominent clinical features of schizophrenia that impact functioning and are a challenge to effective treatment. The integration of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with cognitive and affective neuroscience paradigms enables examination of the brain systems underlying domain-specific behavioral deficits manifested in schizophrenia. There has been a marked increase in the number of studies that apply fMRI in neurobiological studies of schizophrenia. This article highlights phenotypic features of schizophrenia that emerge from these studies and provides a neuropsychiatric perspective. Such efforts have helped elucidate potential neural substrates of deficits in cognition and affect in schizophrenia by providing measures of activation to neurobehavioral probes and connectivity among brain regions. Studies have demonstrated abnormalities at early stages of sensory processing that may influence downstream abnormalities in more complex evaluative functioning. The methodology can help bridge integration with neuropharmacologic, genomic, and neurorehabilitation investigations.