Effects of Schizophrenia Polygenic Risk Scores on Brain Activity and Performance During Working Memory Subprocesses in Healthy Young Adults

Schizophr Bull. 2018 Jun 6;44(4):844-853. doi: 10.1093/schbul/sbx140.

Abstract

Recent work has begun to shed light on the neural correlates and possible mechanisms of polygenic risk for schizophrenia. Here, we map a schizophrenia polygenic risk profile score (PRS) based on genome-wide association study significant loci onto variability in the activity and functional connectivity of a frontoparietal network supporting the manipulation versus maintenance of information during a numerical working memory (WM) task in healthy young adults (n = 99, mean age = 19.8). Our analyses revealed that higher PRS was associated with hypoactivity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) during the manipulation but not maintenance of information in WM (r2 = .0576, P = .018). Post hoc analyses revealed that PRS-modulated dlPFC hypoactivity correlated with faster reaction times during WM manipulation (r2 = .0967, P = .002), and faster processing speed (r2 = .0967, P = .003) on a separate behavioral task. These PRS-associated patterns recapitulate dlPFC hypoactivity observed in patients with schizophrenia during central executive manipulation of information in WM on this task.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Female
  • Genome-Wide Association Study
  • Humans
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Male
  • Memory, Short-Term / physiology*
  • Multifactorial Inheritance*
  • Prefrontal Cortex / diagnostic imaging
  • Prefrontal Cortex / physiology*
  • Schizophrenia* / genetics
  • Young Adult