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

The author found abnormalities of ocular movement including abnormal blink rate and blink reflex to glabellar tap in 34 of 44 medication-free schizophrenic patients. It is not clear whether these signs represent part of the pathology of schizophrenia or result from withdrawal of neuroleptic treatment.
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PMID:Eye blink and schizophrenia: psychosis or tardive dyskinesia? 62 38

Connectionist models are used to explore the relationship between cognitive deficits and biological abnormalities in schizophrenia. Schizophrenic deficits in tasks that tap attention and language processing are reviewed, as are biological disturbances involving prefrontal cortex and the mesocortical dopamine system. Three computer models are then presented that simulate normal and schizophrenic performance in the Stroop task, the continuous performance test, and a lexical disambiguation task. They demonstrate that a disturbance in the internal representation of contextual information can provide a common explanation for schizophrenic deficits in several attention- and language-related tasks. The models also show that these behavioral deficits may arise from a disturbance in a model parameter (gain) corresponding to the neuromodulatory effects of dopamine, in a model component corresponding to the function of prefrontal cortex.
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PMID:Context, cortex, and dopamine: a connectionist approach to behavior and biology in schizophrenia. 154 18

We reported a case of acute water intoxication from compulsive water-drinking, who showed triphasic waves on EEG. The patient was a 50-year-old man who had been undergoing medical treatment in a mental hospital since he was suffering from schizophrenia diagnosed at the age of 35. He had sometimes had a tendency to drink a large amount of water since 45 years old. He began to drink water compulsively since three days ago. He vomited just after he drank excessive water with his mouth directly to the tap for several minutes, and soon fell into loss of consciousness. He was transmitted to our hospital because of acute consciousness disturbance on the next day. On neurological examination, he was profoundly comatose with miosis and conjugate deviation to the right side. His extremities showed decorticate posturing. On admission, serum sodium level was 101 mEq/l, and plasma osmolality was 208 mOsm/l. Serum enzymes derived from muscle and myoglobin were markedly elevated. But there was no laboratory evidence of the other metabolic disorders such as hepatic or renal disease. Computed tomography of the brain disclosed severely diffuse swelling with largely obliterated sulci and narrowed ventricles. EEG showed triphasic waves predominantly over centro-parieto-occipital portion, behind which there was slow wave activity with a loss of normal alpha wave activity. Immediately, treatment began by a combination of saline and glyceol infusion for the purpose of correcting severe hyponatremia, subsequently removing brain edema. As serum sodium level gradually returned to normal, the brain CT findings were getting better.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
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PMID:[A case of acute water intoxication showing triphasic waves on EEG]. 193 65

Information processing models are influenced by the information sciences and by computer technology, which progressed in the 1960s and 1970s. During the last decade these models have formed the theoretical basis for much of the experimental research on cognitive dysfunctions in psychiatric patients. An essential element in all of these models is that information is processed in several discrete stages. Different experimental paradigms have been developed in order to tap information about the processes taking place in each of these stages. Most of the research so far on pathological groups has been done on schizophrenic patients. Some deficits found in schizophrenics seem to be symptom-related. This is the case with performance deficits on the Continuous Performance Test with low processing load. Other dysfunctions might be vulnerability indicators, such as deficit performance on the forced choice Span of Apprehension task and the Continuous Performance Test with high momentary processing load, backward masking, serial recall for items that involve active rehearsal, and eye movement dysfunctions. However, information processing deficits do not seem to be specifically related to schizophrenia. Deficits can be found in other psychiatric syndromes too, especially in manic patients. Generally speaking, the dysfunctions emerge in a milder form in nonschizophrenic patients.
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PMID:Information processing: a new model for understanding cognitive disturbances in psychiatric patients. 218 80

Though self-report measures and clinician-based ratings are extensively used to document psychopathology, there has been little work examining the relationship between these different types of measurement techniques. The current work examined the relationship between the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) in patients with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. Correlations were calculated in an initial exploratory sample, and a set of relationships was selected for confirmation in a second sample. The BPRS items of hallucinatory behavior and tension significantly correlated with MMPI measures of psychoticism. BPRS measures of hostility correlated with scale 4 (Psychopathic Deviate) of the MMPI. BPRS and MMPI measures of depression also were related. In contrast, BPRS and MMPI measures thought to reflect negative symptoms were uncorrelated. These results offer behavioral validity for the use of the MMPI in schizophrenic samples and suggest that the two measures tap similar as well as separable symptom constructs thought to be common in schizophrenia.
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PMID:Correlations between the MMPI and the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale in schizophrenic and schizoaffective patients. 274 68

This paper presents an overview of the literature on the positive/negative symptom distinction in schizophrenia, and explores the implications of the findings for etiological models. Despite the diversity in methodology and focus, certain consistencies emerge from the research. Most important are findings that negative symptoms show a stronger relation with premorbid dysfunction than positive symptoms, and are more predictive of concordance for schizophrenia in monozygotic twins. Thus it appears that negative symptom ratings partially tap some long-standing characteristics of the individual. Moreover, these characteristics appear to be influenced by genetic factors. The implications of the findings for models of the etiology of positive and negative symptoms are discussed.
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PMID:The positive/negative symptom distinction in schizophrenia. Validity and etiological relevance. 315 19

Though individual tests thought to assess frontal lobe function have been administered to patients with schizophrenia for many years, approaches in which a number of tests thought to tap a single function or brain region have rarely been used. Such an approach might define a critical test or a common dysfunctional cognitive process. In the present study four putative neuropsychological tests of frontal lobe integrity, namely, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, the Category Test, Trail Making B, and verbal fluency, were administered to 28 patients with schizophrenia. Seventy-five percent performed abnormally on at least one test. However, relationships among the test results were difficult to characterize, either by correlation or factor analysis. A hierarchical arrangement in which "higher order" tests proscribe performance on "lower order" tests did not appear to be present. Regarding sensitivity, Trails B, the only timed test, was most frequently impaired and verbal fluency was least frequently impaired. The results suggest that the tests assess somewhat different aspects of frontal lobe function, and that no single frontal lobe test is uniquely sensitive to cognitive impairment in schizophrenia.
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PMID:Performance of schizophrenic patients on putative neuropsychological tests of frontal lobe function. 320 72

The development of a multimethod social problem-solving battery for schizophrenia is described. The battery is unique in that empirical methods were used throughout its development. The battery includes components that tap skills for response generation and response evaluation. The behavioral components of social problem solving are assessed in an extended role-play format. Individuals with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, as well as nonpatient controls, completed the social problem-solving battery and cognitive measures. Subjects in the schizophrenia group performed more poorly than controls on measures of the ability to generate and evaluate response alternatives, as well as on the role-play test. The two patient groups did not differ in performance on any of the social problem-solving components. Appropriateness of affect was the most powerful predictor of problem-solving effectiveness.
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PMID:An empirical method for assessing social problem solving in schizophrenia. 762 93

Thirty-five schizophrenic patients in the early stages of illness, 26 of their healthy siblings, and 35 normal control subjects performed the Continuous Performance Test, Identical Pairs version (CPT-IP). Both schizophrenic patients and their siblings were significantly impaired in their attentional performance compared with normal subjects. These results support impaired attention as a vulnerability marker of schizophrenia and indicate that at-risk siblings of schizophrenic patients display attentional deficits comparable to those found for the offspring of schizophrenic parents. By contrast, a decline in performance with the onset of a distraction condition (auditory and visual stimuli) was seen only in schizophrenic patients; siblings and normal control subjects did not differ from one another in response to experimental distraction. Therefore, it was concluded that differential distractibility is likely to be a state marker of schizophrenia. In clinical assessments, healthy siblings rated themselves as experiencing significantly more physical anhedonia than did normal control subjects, but the siblings did not differ from normal control subjects in self-rated perceptual aberrations. Contrary to expectation, performance on the CPT-IP did not correlate significantly with either anhedonia or perceptual aberration in high-risk siblings. These results suggest that psychometrically measured "psychosis proneness" and neuropsychologically detected deficits may tap two nonoverlapping sources of vulnerability to schizophrenia.
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PMID:Attentional abilities and measures of schizotypy: their variation and covariation in schizophrenic patients, their siblings, and normal control subjects. 779 30

Performance on four key neurocognitive tasks was used to search for subtypes in 104 DSM-IIIR schizophrenic patients. The tasks were the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test to index executive prefrontal cerebral function, intrusion errors from the California Verbal Learning Test to tap hippocampal-diencephalic mnestic function, bilateral hand performance on the Purdue Pegboard to index fine motor-basal ganglial function, and a pro-rated IQ from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised to measure general cognitive-cerebral function. Neurocognitive data were analyzed using hierarchical and disjoint clustering procedures with Euclidean distance. A five cluster solution was considered optimal. Cluster 1 (n = 24) comprised patients with selective executive-prefrontal dysfunction; cluster 2 (n = 16) suggested normative function; cluster 3 (n = 20) involved patients with executive-motor/cortico-basal ganglial deficit; cluster 4 (n = 25) suggested dementia/multi-focal disturbance; and cluster 5 (n = 19) consisted of patients with selective motor-basal ganglial deficit. The subtypes differed significantly in age, duration of illness, and extent of hospitalization. Suggestive trends in sex composition and anti-Parkinsonian medication patterns were noted. Neurocognitive tasks combined with cluster analysis have promise in reducing and clarifying the heterogeneity of schizophrenia.
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PMID:Neurocognitive subtypes of chronic schizophrenia. 809 91


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