Alekh's schizophrenic character unrealistic?

Memory deficits are a major problem for individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia. New research discovers a difference in how the brain processes information may be the source for failure of information retrieval.

''We found that schizophrenic patients use different areas of their brain than healthy individuals do for working memory, which is an active form of short-term memory,' said Sohee Park, a Vanderbilt University researcher.

''Both groups used their frontal cortex while remembering and forgetting. However, while healthy subjects groups used the right side of this brain area when asked to remember spatial locations, the schizophrenic patients used a wider network in both hemispheres.

''This suggests that while healthy people recruit a specialized and focused network of brain areas for specific memory functions, schizophrenic patients seem to rely on a more diffuse and wider network to achieve the same goal.

Emotional Memory in Schizophrenia

Emotional memories play an important role in our day-to-day experience, informing many of our minute-to-minute decisions (eg, where to go for dinner, what are the likely consequences of not attending a meeting), as well as our long-term goal setting. Individuals with schizophrenia appear to be impaired in memory for emotional experiences, particularly over longer delay periods, which may contribute to deficits in goal-related behavior and symptoms of amotivation and anhedonia. This article reviews factors that are known to influence emotional memory in healthy subjects, applies these factors to results from emotional memory studies with individuals with schizophrenia, and then uses extant neurobiological models of emotional memory formation to develop hypotheses about biological processes that might particularly contribute to emotional memory impairment in schizophrenia.