Kayako Matsuo1,
Chih-Min Liu2, Shen-Hsing Annabel Chen3, Hai-Gwo Hwu2,
Wen-Yih Isaac Tseng1
1Advanced
Biomedical MRI Lab, Center for Optoelectronic Biomedicine, National Taiwan
University College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan; 2Department of
Psychiatry, National Taiwan University Hospital & College of Medicine,
Taipei, Taiwan; 3Division of Psychology, School of Humanities and
Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore
NRG1 is a susceptibility gene for schizophrenia. Brain activation was compared during fMRI between promoter SNP (NRG1-P3) risk carriers and non-carriers in schizophrenia and controls using a Sternberg verbal working memory task. We performed a group (patients vs. controls) by risk (with or without risk allele) ANOVA in 4 groups (20 each) and found a marked activation decrease in the thalamus and cerebellum only in patients with risk allele. In contrast, risk carriers in general had increased "deeactivation" in DMN. This is the first neuroimaging study showing that a NRG1 promoter genetic variant is associated with working memory in schizophrenia.