Brain Mapping Confirms Schizophrenia Patients’ Impaired Ability to Imitate

According to psychologists, imitation is something that we all do whenever we learn a new skill; however, that appears not be true of those with schizophrenia. As reported online in the American Journal of Psychiatry, the results of a brain-mapping experiment conducted by a team of neuroscientists at Vanderbilt University strengthen the theory that an impaired ability to imitate may underlie the profound and enduring difficulty with social interactions that characterize schizophrenia. The researchers report that when patients with schizophrenia were asked to imitate simple hand movements, their brains exhibited abnormal brain activity in areas associated with the ability to imitate. The new study is the first to use functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the brain activity of schizophrenia patients while performing basic imitation tasks. To read more about the study, click here.