Computational Approach to Schizophrenia: Disconnection Syndrome and Dynamical Pharmacology

Abstract

Schizophrenia may be best understood in terms of abnormal interactions between different brain regions. Tasks such as associative learning that engage different brain regions may be ideal for studying altered brain function in the illness. Preliminary data suggest that the hippocampus is involved in the encoding (learning) and the prefrontal cortex in the retrieval of associative memories. Specific changes in the fMRI activities have also been observed based on comparative studies between stable schizophrenia patients and healthy control subjects. Disconnectivity, observed between brain regions in schizophrenic patients could result from abnormal modulation of N‐methyl‐D‐aspartate (NMDA)‐dependent plasticity implicated in schizophrenia.