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The impact of parent socio-economic status on executive functioning and cortical morphology in individuals with schizophrenia and healthy controls

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2013

R. A. Yeo ,
D. Martinez ,
J. Pommy ,
S. Ehrlich ,
S. C. Schulz ,
B.-C. Ho ,
J. R. Bustillo  and
V. D. Calhoun
R. A. Yeo*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA The Mind Research Network, Albuquerque, NM, USA
D. Martinez
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA
J. Pommy
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA
S. Ehrlich
Affiliation:
Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, USA Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany
S. C. Schulz
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
B.-C. Ho
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA
J. R. Bustillo
Affiliation:
The Mind Research Network, Albuquerque, NM, USA Department of Psychiatry, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA
V. D. Calhoun
Affiliation:
The Mind Research Network, Albuquerque, NM, USA Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA
*
* Address for correspondence: R. A. Yeo, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA. (Email: [email protected])
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Abstract

Background

Relatively lower executive functioning is characteristic of individuals with schizophrenia. As low socio-economic status (SES) early in life (i.e. parent SES) has been linked with lower executive skills in healthy children, we hypothesized that parental SES (pSES) would be more strongly related to executive functioning in individuals with schizophrenia than in controls and have a greater impact on prefrontal cortical morphology.

Method

Healthy controls (n = 125) and individuals with schizophrenia (n = 102) completed tests assessing executive functioning and intelligence. The groups were matched on pSES, which was evaluated with the Hollingshead–Redlich scale. A principal components analysis (PCA) was conducted on 10 variables from six executive tests, yielding three specific components (fluency, planning and response inhibition). Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used to evaluate effects of pSES on gray matter (GM) concentration.

Results

Lower pSES was associated with lower scores across the three executive functioning components, and a significant group by pSES interaction was observed such that low pSES, in particular, affected individuals with schizophrenia. These effects remained significant when intellectual ability, education and self-SES (sSES) were added as covariates. VBM revealed that lower pSES was associated with reduced GM volume in several anterior brain regions, especially the superior frontal gyrus, in patients but not in controls.

Conclusions

These findings suggest that individuals with schizophrenia may be particularly vulnerable to the adverse impact of low pSES, in terms of both lower executive skills and reduced anterior GM volumes.

Keywords

Executive functionfrontal lobesschizophreniasocio-economic statusvoxel-based morphometry
Type
Original Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 44 , Issue 6 , April 2014 , pp. 1257 - 1265
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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