Investigating brain hemodynamics of schizophrenic patients by functional near infrared spectroscopy

Abstract

People can easily stop talking, walking, singing and so on, in response to changes in internal or environmental states. The ability to respond to a specific dimension of a stimulus while suppressing simultaneous inappropriate or no longer required competing stimulus is known as interference effect. This ability to inhibit inappropriate or irrelevant responses is a hallmark of executive control and is subserved by prefrontal cortex of the brain in healthy subjects. Damage to these prefrontal regions, results in response inhibition deficits and also have been linked to several neurological disorders like schizophrenia and autism. Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder that associated with general cognitive impairments in addition to inhibitory deficits. Onset of these symptoms typically occurs in young adulthood, with approximately 1% of the population affected. In this study, attentional processes in schizophrenia spectrum have been examined using Stroop task and fNIRS.|Keywords: Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy, Schizophrenia, Stroop task, Response inhibition.