Object working memory performance is abnormal in the early stages of schizophrenia. Such tasks recruit frontal and temporal cortices, possible sites of progressive change over the early illness course. We wanted to clarify if functional changes can be detected in the early stages of schizophrenia, to identify their anatomical location and their relationship to the stage of illness using a functional object working memory task in which the length of memory delay was manipulated.

40 subjects contributed: 10 first episode psychosis (FEp) patients, 16 with an at risk mental state (ARMS) and 14 healthy controls. We collected functional MRI data while the subjects performed a version of the delayed matching to sample (DMTS) task from the Cambridge Automated Neuropsychological Test Battery (CANTAB).

Behaviourally there was a trend to a group by delay interaction, the two patient groups making more errors at longer memory delays. At successful recognition a main effect of group was detected in the medial temporal lobe bilaterally, while a main effect of delay was detected in the left medial temporal lobe. At each length of memory delay the patient groups showed consistently greater activation of medial temporal regions when performing the task accurately.

Both ARMS & FEp groups showed greater activation than controls in the medial temporal cortex across all lengths of memory delay. These differences were not related to poorer task performance, but suggest an inefficiency mechanism that may correlate with the vulnerability to psychosis rather than pychosis per se.