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Query: UMLS:C0036341 (schizophrenia)
 60,220 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Comorbid alcohol use disorders are common in schizophrenia. Although a variety of explanatory hypotheses involving self-medication have been proposed, few data available regarding schizophrenic patients' subjective experiences while using alcohol. We report interview data from 75 DSM-III-R schizophrenic outpatients regarding their subjective responses to alcohol. Over half of our sample reported that alcohol improved social anxiety, tension, dysphoria, apathy, anhedonia, and sleep difficulties. Other nonpsychotic experiences were frequently improved as well. In contrast, no more than 15% of subjects reported that alcohol relieved any specific psychotic symptom; similar proportions of subjects reported that alcohol aggravated psychotic symptoms. Reporting that alcohol had a positive effect on nonpsychotic experiences was associated with having lifetime alcohol use disorders. Reporting that alcohol relieved psychotic symptoms was associated both with having lifetime alcohol use disorders and with the number of psychotic symptoms reported. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding alcohol abuse and dependence among schizophrenics.
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PMID:Subjective experiences related to alcohol use among schizophrenics. 155 69

Sixteen unmedicated (14 never-medicated, 2 with washout periods of 1-2 weeks) schizophrenic patients displaying positive symptoms (e.g., formal thought disorder, hallucinations, delusions) without negative symptoms (e.g., flattening of affect, loss of energy, anhedonia--type I patients), 15 unmedicated (with washout periods from 1 week to 2 years) patients with marked negative symptomatology [type II patients; criterion score below 15/above 35 on the Munich version of the Scale of Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS), respectively], and 31 matched normal controls were investigated using regional cerebral blood flow [rCBF; dynamic single-photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT) with Xenon-133 as tracer] and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI; spin-echo technique, T1 weighted, midsagittal cuts). rCBF measurements were performed during both resting conditions and simple motor activation. Separately, on the same day, we performed a planimetric evaluation of the callosal-brain ratio in all subjects using MRI. In accordance with previous results on a smaller sample, we found signs of diffuse bilateral rCBF hyperactivation in type I patients, as compared with signs of nonreactivity in type II schizophrenics. Both activation patterns were different from a strictly contralateral sensorimotor rCBF activation seen in normal persons (only 8 studied with SPECT). The planimetry of relative callosal area did not reveal differences compared to normal persons, when type I/II patients were taken together. However, the threefold increased variance as compared with that found in normal persons suggested biological heterogeneity in patients. We found an increase of relative callosal size in type I as compared with type II patients. In the light of some recent findings linking lack of laterality of several brain functions to increased callosal size, we propose lack of laterality/diffuse hyperactivation and increased callosal size to be connected with positive symptomatology/good prognosis schizophrenia, and vice versa.
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PMID:Brain dysfunction during motor activation and corpus callosum alterations in schizophrenia measured by cerebral blood flow and magnetic resonance imaging. 190 62

Data are presented concerning three recent clinical distinctions in schizophrenia: kraepelinian versus non-kraepelinian patients; mixed versus simple undifferentiated subtypes; and state-dependent versus state-independent negative symptoms. Schizophrenic patients who have been ill and dependent on others for the past 5 years ('kraepelinians') were compared to other chronic schizophrenics. The kraepelinian patients met the criteria for schizophrenia by more diagnostic systems than other patients, were less responsive to haloperidol, had more severe negative symptoms and formal thought disorder, and had similarly severe positive symptoms. They also had cerebral ventricles that demonstrated more left-to-right asymmetry and a greater family history of schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Mixed undifferentiated schizophrenic patients, who met criteria for more than one schizophrenic subtype, were compared to simple undifferentiated schizophrenic patients, who met criteria for no subtype. The mixed group was characterized by more severe positive and negative symptoms and formal thought disorder, worse social functioning, and a worse response to haloperidol. In a subgroup of patients who were studied once while in a state of exacerbation and once while in a state of relative remission, the negative symptoms of inattention and affective flattening were state-dependent, while anhedonia-asociality was state-independent.
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PMID:Diagnostic issues in chronic schizophrenia: kraepelinian schizophrenia, undifferentiated schizophrenia, and state-independent negative symptoms. 203 64

In order to clarify the characteristic psychopathology of chronic methamphetamine (MAP) psychosis, the clinical symptoms of 11 chronic MAP psychotics were compared with those of the same number of chronic schizophrenics matched for sex and age. The positive symptoms were almost similar in both groups. However, the negative symptoms evaluated by the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) differed considerably. According to the SANS, the scores of avolition-apathy, anhedonia-asociality and attentional impairment were moderately high in both groups. The scores of affective flattening or blunting and alogia were lower in the MAP group than those in the schizophrenia group. The SANS scores of negative symptoms increased in accordance with the age of onset in the MAP group, while such a correlation was not observed in the schizophrenia group. Furthermore, detailed clinical observations of the patients revealed the following differences between the two groups: 1) spontaneous affective expression during the interviews was more vivid in the MAP group compared to the schizophrenia group, and 2) affective expressions or interpersonal behaviors changed immediately depending on the situation in the MAP group. From the viewpoint of clinical psychopathology, a group of MAP psychotics whose hallucinatory-delusional state persisted for a long period of one month or more after cessation of MAP use seemed to differ from either chronic schizophrenics or patients with acute MAP psychosis. The author proposed that this group of patients should be a clinical entity and be called as "residual methamphetamine psychosis."
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PMID:Chronic schizophrenia-like states in methamphetamine psychosis. 207 12

The positive and negative symptoms were analyzed in 115 schizophrenic patients (DSM-III-R criteria) through correlative and factorial analyses, in order to test the positive-negative hypothesis of schizophrenia. The intercorrelative analysis showed high intercorrelations between negative, but low or no correlations between positive symptoms (excepting delusions with hallucinations), which implies that the group of positive symptoms may represent more than one type of symptom complex. This results were confirmed by factorial analysis which identified three distinct clusters of symptoms: the negative syndrome (affective flattening, alogia, abolition-apathy, and anhedonia-asociality), the disorganizative syndrome (positive formal thought disorder, and attentional impairment) and the positive syndrome (delusions and hallucinations). No inverse relations were observed between positive and negative syndromes. This results no support the bipolar-independence hypothesis of the positive-negative distinction in schizophrenia and they need to be confirmed through external validators.
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PMID:[Positive and negative schizophrenic symptoms: a reanalysis of the dichotomous model of schizophrenia]. 207 47

According to the three hypotheses on the regional brain dysfunction in schizophrenia that have received some support in studies of cerebral blood flow (CBF) and cerebral metabolic rate, we calculated eight CBF measurement indices in 59 schizophrenic patients; frontality, laterality, cortical to subcortical gradients and superior to inferior difference. Four factors were selected from these eight indices, treated by principal component factor analysis (factor 1: cortical to subcortical gradient; factor 2: inferior frontality; factor 3: superior frontality; factor 4: laterality). We investigated their correlations with clinical and demographic characteristics. Factor 1 correlated with duration of illness. Factor 2 related most highly to numbers of perseverative errors on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and moderately to anhedonia. Factor 4 related to attentional impairment score of the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms. The schizophrenia specific symptom score calculated from the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale did not relate to any of these factors. It seemed that there were various dimensions of neural deficits in schizophrenia, corresponding to various aspects of symptomatology or neuropsychological functions.
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PMID:Frontality, laterality, and cortical-subcortical gradient of cerebral blood flow in schizophrenia: relationship to symptoms and neuropsychological functions. 213 35

The primary neuropsychological theories of schizophrenia have emphasized disturbed dominant hemisphere functioning, although schizophrenics (SZs), particularly those with flat affect, may have deficits resembling those of patients with damage to their right hemisphere. SZs, right-brain-damaged patients (RBDs), and normal controls (NCs) were videotaped while talking about a pleasant and an unpleasant experience. Raters viewed the video recordings of facial activity with the audio portion turned off and assessed the intensity of emotion, the amount of positive emotion, and the amount of negative emotion. Compared to controls, both patient groups were judged as less expressive and as displaying more negative than positive emotion. In particular, the patients seemed to have difficulty with the expression of positive feelings. For the SZ group, these findings may be related to anhedonia or to poor social functioning, which are often features of the illness. The findings for the RBD group are contrary to previous studies which have suggested that the right hemisphere is specialized for negative emotion.
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PMID:Spontaneous expression of facial emotion in schizophrenic and right-brain-damaged patients. 224 84

Schizophrenic outpatients with and without the deficit syndrome were administered Chapman's "psychosis proneness" scales. As hypothesized, deficit syndrome patients had higher scores on Social Anhedonia and Physical Anhedonia, but did not differ from nondeficit patients on Perceptual Aberration, Magical Ideation, or Impulsive Nonconformity. The differences between the two groups were not related to race, gender, age, socioeconomic status of family of origin, or drug treatment. These results support the validity of the deficit syndrome, and suggest that the Social Anhedonia and Physical Anhedonia scales may be useful in future studies of schizophrenia.
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PMID:Anhedonia and the deficit syndrome of schizophrenia. 231 21

Audio-taped interviews recorded in the Gottesman-Shields schizophrenic twin series (17 pairs of identical twins, 14 pairs of fraternal same-sex twins, and 12 unpaired twins) were rated for level of hedonic capacity. Schizophrenics who were not hospitalized at the time of their interview were rated significantly lower (more impaired) on hedonic capacity than their normal co-twins. A significant negative correlation was also found between hedonic capacity and severity of illness. Hedonic capacity was found to be genetically influenced, although it appeared to be less heritable than the global diagnosis of schizophrenia. These results are consistent with Meehl's suggestion that reduced hedonic capacity is a heritable personality trait which potentiates the development of schizophrenia among those who are genetically predisposed to the disorder. The results suggest that anhedonia is not a phenotypic vulnerability marker for schizophrenia.
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PMID:Hedonic capacity in schizophrenics and their twins. 235 62

This report compared the selective attention of 19 schizophrenic in-patients, 10 recently discharged schizophrenic out-patients, 21 schizophrenic out-patients in stable clinical remission, 33 first-degree relatives of schizophrenics from 15 families, 25 students who scored deviantly on questionnaire measures of magical ideation, perceptual aberrations, and physical anhedonia, and 20 normal controls. Results indicated that distractors only disrupted the performance of schizophrenic in-patients, suggesting that differential deficits in selective attention are a marker of episodes of schizophrenia. A propensity to interject phonemes from the distracting message was found not only in patients in or just emerging from a psychotic episode, but also in the remaining vulnerable but non-psychotic groups, suggesting that intrusion errors might be a mediating vulnerability marker. The findings suggest both state and possibly trait aspects to distractibility in schizophrenia.
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PMID:Distractibility in schizophrenia: state and trait aspects. 260 25


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