Review of functional magnetic resonance imaging in schizophrenia

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) holds great promise for assessing temporal changes in brain activity using various challenge paradigms. In this report, we review the 14 studies (eight of them abstracts) that comprise the fMRI literature available to date relating to schizophrenia. Twelve of the 14 investigations examined changes in blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) contrast: two examined blood volume. Eight of the 12 BOLD studies relied on lower-order cognitive processing to measure activation (involving sensory or motor areas), whereas four used higher-order tasks (word production, auditory processing, and subspan word recall involving multiple brain areas). Although the variability in tasks used, brain regions studied, imaging methods used, patient characteristics reported, and methods of reporting significance precluded a full meta-analysis, we re-analyzed these published data to compute effect sizes. In most studies, resting blood volume and BOLD changes, regardless of the complexity of the cognitive task, appeared to differ between patients with schizophrenia and control subjects.