Cortico-subcortical underpinnings of narrative processing impairment in schizophrenia

Cortical and subcortical gray matter volumes were correlated with a set of linguistic scores in a group of schizophrenia patients. Lexical informativeness was positively associated with the volume of the left frontal cortical and accumbal areas, while left hippocampal atrophy and right ventricle enlargement predicted increased production of semantic paraphasias. Global coherence impairment was predicted by left accumbal volume reduction and left ventricle enlargement. These data confirm that the brain structure of specific cortical and subcortal areas, as determined by magnetic resonance imaging, is related to the compromised semantic retrieval and language control in schizophrenia.