- Researchers analyzed the patterns of brain activity evoked by movie scenes in people with schizophrenia.
- The researchers report that in the brains of individuals without schizophrenia, mental concepts are organized into semantic domains and related concepts are connected, enabling coherent thought and speech.
- In people with schizophrenia, these semantic networks appeared to be disrupted, resulting in incoherent speech and delusions.
- This study provides the first biological evidence for the “loosening of associations” theory of schizophrenia and may potentially be used to understand the biological basis of other mental disorders as well as the creative processes of exceptionally talented individuals.
Schizophrenia is a mental health condition characterized by hallucinations, delusion (inaccurate interpretation of reality), and incoherent speech.
The term schizophrenia was
In the brains of individuals without schizophrenia, ideas, words, and phrases that share a common meaning or are related in some way (semantically related) are connected to form “semantic networks.” For example, some semantically related concepts to the word red could be green, fire engine or apple.
In schizophrenia, typical connections in the brain are “loosened” and unrelated concepts are connected.
Although the theory of loosening of associations is accepted within the medical community, during the past 100 years since its inception, doctors have not found proof that there are specific brain characteristics that cause it.
Now, with the help of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and natural language processing (NLP) techniques, researchers at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) led by Dr. Hidehiko Takahashi, a professor and…
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