Sean A. Spence

In recent years there have been major advances in areas of clinical neuroscience including neurogenetics, neuroimaging and the scientific study of consciousness. Disorders of Brain and Mind II brings together the most important findings since the previous volume was published in 1998. In this entirely new collection of articles, the scope is again wide. Imaging of the normal and abnormal mind figures prominently, and there is also coverage of genes and behaviour, brain development, consciousness and aggression. New disease-orientated chapters detail recent advances in dementia, affective illness and drug use and abuse. Clinical chapters are paired with those describing neuropathology or experimental models of the disease in question. The distinguished editors have assembled an authoritative team of contributors from the fields of psychiatry, clinical and cognitive neuroscience, and psychology. This book will appeal to anyone who has a clinical or scientific interest in the mind and its disorders.

Background: PET studies of verbal fluency in schizophrenia report a failure of ‘deactivation’ of left superior temporal gyrus (STG) in the presence of activation of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which deficit has been attributed to underlying ‘functional disconnectivity’.Aim: To test whether these findings provide trait-markers for schizophrenia.Method: We used H₂¹⁵O PET to examine verbal fluency in 10 obligate carriers of the predisposition to schizophrenia, 10 stable patients and 10 normal controls.Results: We found no evidence of a failure of left STG deactivation in carriers or patients. Instead, patients failed to deactivate the precuneus relative to other groups. We found no differences in functional connectivity between left DLPFC and left STG but patients exhibited significant disconnectivity between left DLPFC and anterior cingulate cortex.Conclusions: Failure of left STG ‘deactivation’ and left fronto-temporal disconnectivity are not consistent findings in schizophrenia; neither are they trait-markers for genetic risk. Prefrontal functional disconnectivity here may characterise the schizophrenic phenotype.