Episodic memory and neuroimaging of hippocampus and fornix in chronic schizophrenia

A group of 44 patients with schizophrenia and 43 age-matched controls completed psychometrically-matched tasks of recall and recognition. The patients showed similarly depressed scores across both recall and recognition matched tasks, independent of their reduced IQ and executive functioning scores. In addition, reduced memory scores correlated in the expected direction with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the hippocampus and diffusion tension imaging (DTI) of the fornix for subsets of both patients and controls that had available these structural imaging measures. Reduced executive functioning also correlated with lower fornix integrity for the patient subset. However, increased hippocampal volume correlated, in the negative direction, with lower scores for executive functioning and IQ in the control subset. Implications of these results are discussed.