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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 April 2020
Several neuroimaging studies have shown impaired microstructural integrity of corpus callosum in schizophrenia, which may support inter-hemispheric misconnection. However, functional connectivity has rarely been investigated in schizophrenia.
To explore inter-hemispheric communication in a sample of patients with schizophrenia in comparison to healthy controls.
Twenty-five patients with schizophrenia and forty-one healthy controls were studied. Subjects were asked to press a key with the index-finger of their right or the left hand as quickly as possible following appearance of either a single or a double stimulus. Two measures were calculated: the difference between manual reaction times (RT) after the presentation of single stimuli to the ipsilateral (uncrossed response) or contralateral (crossed response) visual hemifield (the so-called Poffenberger Paradigm), as a measure of interhemispheric transfer time (ITT), and the difference between double and single stimuli (the Redundant Target Effect, RTE), as a measure of interhemispheric integration.
Overall, patients with schizophrenia responded faster with the left than with the right hand (Paired sample t-test p=0.019). Importantly, in schizophrenics there was no group difference in ITT but there was a significantly enhanced RTE .
The slower RT for right hand in schizophrenics possibly reflects a general delay of the left cerebral hemisphere in visuomotor RT. Moreover, the enhanced RTE suggests an impairment of interhemispheric integration in schizophrenia.
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