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

The frequency of Schneider's first rank symptoms (FRS) was studied in 221 Malay patients with functional psychosis. The prevalence of FRS in schizophrenia was 26.7%. The most common symptoms were voice arguing, passivity phenomena and somatic passivity. In the absence of organic brain dysfunction, the specificity of FRS for schizophrenia was 87.8%, and their positive predictive value was 90.6%. These findings indicate that although FRS is not pathognomonic of schizophrenia, their presence should be regarded as strongly suggestive of schizophrenia in the absence of organic etiology. FRS do not however occur with sufficient frequency to have potential diagnostic in schizophrenia.
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PMID:Specificity of Schneider's first rank symptoms for schizophrenia in Malay patients. 149 43

Some, although not all, researchers have reported dramatically increased numbers of perseverative responses on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) in schizophrenic patients compared to normal comparison subjects. The current study was designed to further explore the nature of possible WCST deficits in a group of paranoid schizophrenic patients compared to normal and psychiatric comparison subjects. In the current study, schizophrenic patients had significantly greater numbers of perserverative responses on the WCST than the comparison groups. The sample of patients with schizophrenia appeared to be characterized by a non-Gaussian distribution of perseverative responses on the WCST. WCST-impaired and WCST-nonimpaired schizophrenic subgroups were compared on cognitive and symptom measures, and increased perseverative responding was associated with negative symptoms, slowed reaction time, and more hospitalizations. While additional research is necessary to further investigate hypotheses of frontal versus generalized brain dysfunction in schizophrenic patients, WCST impairment seems to be present in a clinically meaningful subgroup of paranoid schizophrenic patients.
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PMID:Wisconsin Card Sorting Test deficits in chronic paranoid schizophrenia. Evidence for a relatively discrete subgroup? 151 78

Schizophrenia is characterised by the psychotic symptoms of hallucinations and delusions, accompanied by variable degrees of loss of insight. Whilst there is heterogeneity in the clinical profile, and presumably in the pathogenesis of what is currently called 'schizophrenia', it has become absolutely clear over the past decade that schizophrenic symptoms are consequent upon serious brain dysfunction. This new perspective has laid to rest a variety of 'crazy' theories, including the notion that mental illness was a myth, or that schizophrenia could be caused by faulty child rearing. The use of dopamine-blocking drugs has led to an improvement in symptom control, and diminished the need for prolonged hospital stays. It was hoped that the clear relationship between antipsychotic activity and dopamine blockade would help to elucidate the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, but to date no consistent abnormalities of the dopamine system have been found. Nevertheless, we have learned much about both the aetiology of schizophrenia and the origin of particular symptoms. Much of this has stemmed from increased understanding of the brain abnormalities underlying the disorder.
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PMID:Schizophrenia and neurodevelopment. 158 20

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

Delusions may be the most prominent manifestations of brain dysfunction, and a host of medical and neurologic conditions can present with or produce delusions. Recognition of the underlying disorder frequently aids in successful treatment. Comparison of organic delusional syndromes with schizophrenia suggests that limbic system abnormality and dopamine dysfunction are common underlying factors shared by different causes of delusions.
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PMID:Organic delusional syndrome. 225

The severity and character of somatomorphic disorders determined by the author as the syndrome of minor brain dysfunction in persons whose relatives suffer of schizophrenia furthers their mental decompensation. Therapy with neurometabolic stimulators and cerebral vasoactive substances normalizes their condition. The author suggests the necessity of prophylactic medical management of this contingent of patients.
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PMID:[The need for ambulatory care of persons with minimal brain dysfunction syndrome]. 278 78

Two of the hypotheses on regional brain dysfunction in schizophrenia that have received some support in studies of cerebral blood flow (CBF) and cerebral metabolic rate (CMR) are: (1) left hemispheric dysfunction and overactivation (laterality) and (2) frontal lobe deactivation or failure to activate (frontality). Although these hypotheses are not mutually exclusive, their relative importance for providing clues to neural underpinnings of symptoms specific to schizophrenia depends on their ability to predict variation in symptomatology. A potentially efficient strategy for such study is to start with physiological parameters of laterality and frontality, and correlate them with measures of severity of clinical symptoms specific to schizophrenia. For two schizophrenic samples reported earlier, we derived laterality (left-right hemispheres) and frontality (frontal-posterior regions) measures of CBF (Study 1) and CMR (Study 2), and correlated them with symptom specificity, defined as the difference in severity of symptoms specific and nonspecific to schizophrenia assessed by the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale. In both studies, low but significant positive correlations were obtained between the specificity score and laterality for CBF in Study 1 and for CMR in Study 2, but not frontality. The results suggest that in these samples disturbances in lateralized activity are more prominently associated with the phenomenology of schizophrenia than disturbed frontal lobe activity.
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PMID:Laterality and frontality of cerebral blood flow and metabolism in schizophrenia: relationship to symptom specificity. 278 74

Primitive (developmental) reflexes are present in fetal and infant life, but disappear in adulthood. Their elicitation in later life usually occurs in association with cortical or diffuse cerebral dysfunction and suggests a new approach to the issue of whether tardive dyskinesia is particularly likely to occur in patients with organic brain disorder(s). Sixty-six patients with schizophrenia (age range 50-86) and 18 with bipolar affective disorder (age range 40-77) were assessed for the presence of involuntary movements and for the release of the grasp, palmomental, snout, corneomandibular, and glabellar reflexes. In each diagnostic group, patients with involuntary movements showed a significant excess of primitive reflexes in comparison with otherwise indistinguishable patients without such movements. These results complement recent reports that similar patients with involuntary movements also show greater cognitive impairment and point anew to an association between the presence of tardive dyskinesia and of organic brain dysfunction. They raise again the issue of whether or not such dysfunction may be a consequence of neurodevelopmental abnormality rather than of neurodegenerative processes.
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PMID:Primitive (developmental) reflexes and diffuse cerebral dysfunction in schizophrenia and bipolar affective disorder: overrepresentation in patients with tardive dyskinesia. 289 19

Structural brain abnormalities in schizophrenia have been reported by several computertomographic (CT) studies. However the prevalence and the localization of the abnormalities vary widely among studies. These differences might stem from samples heterogeneity, from the choice of the CT parameter to be investigated and from the use of different criteria for defining abnormalities. In spite of some contradictory findings, it seems established that at least one subgroup of schizophrenic patients shows mild or moderate brain atrophy; this subgroup might be characterized by a chronic course of the disease, poor response to neuroleptic therapy, and the presence of other neurodiagnostic signs of a diffuse brain dysfunction such as neuropsychological impairment, EEG abnormalities and neurological "soft signs". Atrophic findings have been observed in young schizophrenic patients at the first onset of the disease, indicating that the development of the structural abnormalities are not a consequence of a chronic disease and treatment. Schizophrenics with atrophy are unlikely to have a genetic loading (family history) with schizophrenia and they present more frequently pregnancy and birth complications as well as brain trauma in the first years of development. Because schizophrenics with brain atrophy might represent a more homogeneous subgroup with regard to clinical and aetiopathological variables, it is still an important task to identify more precisely these patients on the basis of CT data and then to study the features that could characterize this subgroup.
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PMID:[Cerebral computed tomography and schizophrenia: a critical review of the literature]. 306 11

In this final electroencephalographic (EEG) mapping study of our series on motor dysfunction in neuroleptic-treated schizophrenic patients, we studied 10 right-handed patients with marked negative symptomatology [type II; raw score on the SANS (Munich version) 31.4 +/- 5.1]. Simple and multisensorimotor tasks involving both the dominant and nondominant hand were used for cortical activation. All tasks were referred to resting states obtained after specially designed relaxation procedures. In contrast to predominantly type I patients (SANS-MV score 12.3 +/- 4.9) of our previous EEG mapping studies, we found for resting states minor evidence (only) of increased power values in the frequency bands delta and theta. Furthermore, in contrast to signs of "left hemisphere dysfunction" and possible "compensatory right hemisphere overactivation" during motor tasks, which we discussed previously for our type I patients, we found for the type II schizophrenics a bilateral brain dysfunction. This consisted of "nonreactivity" in all frequency bands except alpha, in which, on the contrary, a "hyperreactivity" seemed to be present. In combination with evidence of bilateral hemispheric dysfunction in type II patients reported by other authors using EEG, evoked potentials, regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods, this suggests that marked bilateral brain dysfunction may be correlated in schizophrenia with a clinical syndrome corresponding rather to the "negative pole" of the positive-negative dimension. In contrast, "left hemisphere dysfunction" and "signs of compensatory overactivation" seem to be linked more to a "positive" symptomatology. Finally, discrepancies of our EEG mapping and rCBF findings during motor activity suggest, speculatively, "uncoupling" between electrical and circulatory parameters in schizophrenia involving both hemispheres in type II, and predominantly the left hemisphere in type I, patients.
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PMID:Bilateral brain dysfunction during motor activation in type II schizophrenia measured by EEG mapping. 333 63


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