Homepage of Matthijs Vink

In my VENI project, I investigated the fronto-striatal network in healthy subjects, schizophrenia patients, and siblings of patients. Toghether with Bram Zandbelt, I performed a number of experiments. The papers are currently either submitted or in preparation.

People constantly make predictions in order to optimize their behaviour. Patients with schizophrenia fail to do that efficiently. Why is this? This study shows that healthy subjects, when performing a task, focus not only on those items that require immediate attention. They also try to predict what will happen next. Such a prediction, which allows them to adjust their behaviour in advance, is called anticipation. As an everyday example of anticipation, consider a motorist reducing his speed when he expects that the traffic light will turn red the moment he reaches it. This is efficient, because preparing for future events allows for more available attention when the anticipated event actually occurs.  At least two brain areas are involved in predicting and anticipating behaviour: the frontal cortex and the basal regions located in the center of the brain. These areas form a network and communicate via a substance (neurotransmitter) called dopamine. Our research, in which we used functional MRI, showed that this network is dysfunctional in patients with schizophrenia. Although the reasons for this dysfunction remain to be uncovered, our results indicate that genes play a causal role. Indeed, not only patients but also their healthy relatives show functional disturbances in this network. As a result of this network dysfunction, patients experience difficulties in predicting events. Therefore, they are not able to adjust their behaviour in advance, leading to less efficient behaviour.

In addition to using a stop-signal paradigm, we also tested participants on a sternberg working memory task.