Brain’s Ability to Imitate Inactive in People with Schizophrenia

Amy Taylor March 18, 2014

Neuroscientists at Vanderbilt University found that patients with schizophrenia have an impaired ability to imitate, which could explain why they tend to have poor social interaction skills.

The researchers were the first to use functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the brain activity of schizophrenia patients while performing basic imitation tasks. “The fact that patients with schizophrenia show abnormal brain activity when they imitate simple hand gestures is important because action imitation is a primary building block of social abilities,” said first author Katharine Thakkar, Ph.D., who conducted much of the research while completing her doctoral programme at Vanderbilt and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University Medical Centre in the Dutch city of Tutrecht.

“The ability to imitate is present early in life and is crucial for learning how to navigate the social world. According to current theory, covert imitation is also the most fundamental way that we understand the intentions and feelings of other people.”

Thakkar note that one of the obstacles to recovery of schizophrenia patients is the profound and enduring difficulty with social interactions, which makes it hard for them to establish relationships or maintain employment.

In the study, patients were asked to imitate simple hand movements whilst the researchers looked at their brain activities through the fMRI scan. The brains showed abnormal activity in the “imitating area” in the brains of the schizophrenic patients.

“As people with schizophrenia commonly have major social problems, understanding their origin, both neurobiological and behavioural, is critically important,” said Philip D. Harvey, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

“While study of the activation of the brain while observing versus imitating hand movements may seem too specific to be relevant, it is actually targeting a critical learning process with specific relevance to social functioning.”

The researchers said there is no drug that can fix the problem. However, they see greater hope in developing training methods that will improve the cognitive skills of people with schizophrenia.

Their findings were published in the journal American Journal of Psychiatry.

Source of this article:

Mimicry Impaired in Those with Schizophrenia