Neuropsychological deficit and regional cerebral blood flow in schizophrenic patients

The paper examined the relationship between the scales of the Luria Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery and measures of cerebral blood flow in a sample of 51 chronic schizophrenic patients without a history of brain damage. Of 88 correlations between the two sets of data, 22 were significant at the .05 level. The measurement of left anterior gray flow were particularly predictive of LNNB scores, although all correlations were at a moderate level, ranging from -.24 to -.38. The data are consistent with the hypothesis that neuropsychological testing performance in schizophrenics is related to brain function rather than merely reflecting deficits due to anxiety or other psychiatric features which have been hypothesized to invalidate neuropsychological assessment in this population. The data are also consistent with the notion that schizophrenia is more likely associated with left-anterior functioning, and that gray-matter measures in rCBF are effective predictors of neuropsychological performance.