The British Journal of Psychiatry (2007) 191: 178-179. doi: 10.1192/bjp.bp.106.024604
© 2007 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
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SHORT REPORT

Manifest disease and motor cortex reactivity in twins discordant for schizophrenia

MARTIN SCHÜRMANN, MD, PhD, JUHA JÄRVELÄINEN, MD, PhD and SARI AVIKAINEN, MD, PhD

Brain Research Unit, Low Temperature Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland

TYRONE D. CANNON, PhD

Departments of Psychology, Psychiatry and Human Genetics, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California, USA

JOUKO LÖNNQVIST, MD, PhD and MATTI HUTTUNEN, MD, PhD

Department of Mental Health and Alcohol Research, National Public Health Institute of Finland

RIITTA HARI, MD, PhD

Brain Research Unit, Low Temperature Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland

Correspondence: Dr Martin Schürmann, School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK. Email: martin.schuermann{at}nottingham.ac.uk

Declaration of interest None. Funding detailed in Acknowledgements.

Schizophrenia is often associated with difficulties in distinguishing between actions of self and of others. This could reflect dysfunction of the mirror neuron system which directly matches observed and executed actions. We studied 11 people with schizophrenia and their co-twins without manifest disease, using stimulus-induced changes in the magnetoencephalographic ~20 Hz rhythm as an index of activation in the motor cortex part of the mirror neuron system. During action observation and execution, motor cortex reaction was weaker in those with schizophrenia than in their co-twins, suggesting a disease-related dysfunction of motor cognition.




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