Functional MRI imaging methods have allowed researchers to combine neurocognitive testing with structural neuroanatomical measures, consider cognitive and affective paradigms, and create computer-aided diagnosis techniques and algorithms.
This is due the influential development in the scanner hardware, where it now allows for technicians to retrieve higher resolution images in a shorter amount of time.
Alterations in these networks may affect self-referential thoughts and responses to external stimuli, potentially contributing to symptoms like hallucinations and disorganized thinking.
In a 'reformulation' of the binary-risk vulnerability model, researchers have suggested a multiple-hit hypothesis that utilizes several risk factors — some bestowing a greater probability than others — to identify at-risk individuals, often genetically predisposed to schizophrenia.
[7] A rapid increase of studies in schizophrenia has covered topics such as abnormal activity in "motor tasks, working memory attention, word fluency, emotion processing, and decision making.
The 'basic symptoms' approach for schizophrenia, which emerged from "retrospective descriptions of the prodromal phase," represents a framework for a large portion of fMRI research, which evaluates changes in cognition and sensory perception that may affect higher-level information processes.
[11] New research also suggests that disruptions in basic visual and auditory processing could contribute to impaired social perception in schizophrenia, making it difficult for individuals to interpret body language and facial expressions accurately.
In one study, researchers found significantly differing activity between healthy and schizophrenic patients in the left dorsal parietal cortex and left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex; as these regions are essential components of a frontal-parietal executive system, hypo-activity in these regions for schizophrenia patients during working memory tasks were theorized to be associated with deficits in executive functioning.
It is measured as "temporal correlations of low-frequency oscillations in the BOLD signal between anatomically distinct brain areas" and can reveal resting state networks.
[19] Through resting-state fMRI, scientists have observed that schizophrenia is associated with altered connectivity patterns in the default mode, central executive, and salience networks.
These findings provide additional support for the dysconnectivity hypothesis, which suggests that impaired coordination between brain regions contributes to the cognitive and behavioral symptoms of schizophrenia.