Skip Navigation



Cerebral Cortex Advance Access published online on September 12, 2007
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhm151
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
18/5/990    most recent
bhm151v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Frantseva, M. V.
Right arrow Articles by Daskalakis, Z. J.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Frantseva, M. V.
Right arrow Articles by Daskalakis, Z. J.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Evidence for Impaired Long-Term Potentiation in Schizophrenia and Its Relationship to Motor Skill Leaning

Marina V. Frantseva1, Paul B. Fitzgerald2, Robert Chen3, Bertram Möller4, Melissa Daigle1 and Zafiris J. Daskalakis1

1 Schizophrenia Program, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2 Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre, The Alfred and Monash University Department of Psychological Medicine, Commercial Road, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 3 Division of Neurology, Toronto Western Hospital, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 4 Department of Psychiatry, Ernst Moritz Arndt Universität Greifswald, Greifswald, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany

Address Correspondence to Dr Zafiris J. Daskalakis, Schizophrenia Program, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 7th Floor, Clarke Division 250 College Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5T1R8, Canada. Email: Jeff__Daskalakis{at}camh.net.

Several lines of evidence suggest that schizophrenia (SCZ) is associated with disrupted plasticity in the cortex. However, there is little direct neurophysiological evidence of aberrant long-term potentiation (LTP)–like plasticity in SCZ and little human evidence to establish a link between LTP to learning and memory. LTP was evaluated using a neurophysiological paradigm referred to as paired associative stimulation (PAS). PAS involves pairing of median nerve electric stimulation with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the contralateral motor cortex (for abductor pollicis brevis muscle activation) delivered at 25-ms interstimulus interval. This pairing was delivered at a frequency of 0.1 Hz for 30 min. LTP was reflected by the change in motor evoked potentials (MEPs) before and after PAS. In addition, motor skill learning was assessed using the rotary pursuit task. Compared with healthy subjects, patients with SCZ demonstrated significant MEP facilitation deficits following PAS and impaired rotary-pursuit motor learning. Across all subjects there was a significant association between LTP and motor skill learning. These data provide evidence for disrupted LTP in SCZ, whereas the association between LTP with motor skill learning suggests that the deficits in learning and memory in SCZ may be mediated through disordered LTP.

Key Words: cortex • learning • LTP • paired associative stimulation • rotary pursuit • schizophrenia • transcranial magnetic stimulation


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Cereb CortexHome page
B. Kolomiets, A. Marzo, J. Caboche, P. Vanhoutte, and S. Otani
Background Dopamine Concentration Dependently Facilitates Long-term Potentiation in Rat Prefrontal Cortex through Postsynaptic Activation of Extracellular Signal-Regulated Kinases
Cereb Cortex, November 1, 2009; 19(11): 2708 - 2718.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.