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Research paper thumbnail of Role of glutamate  -2 receptors in activity-dependent competition between heterologous afferent fibers

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2001

A principle that regulates detailed architecture in the brain is that active terminals have a com... more A principle that regulates detailed architecture in the brain is that active terminals have a competitive advantage over less active terminals in establishing synaptic connections. This principle is known to apply to fibers within a single neuronal population competing for a common target domain. Here we uncover an additional rule that applies when two neuronal populations compete for two contiguous territories. The cerebellar Purkinje cell dendrites have two different synaptic domains with spines innervated by two separate excitatory inputs, parallel fibers (PFs) and climbing fibers (CFs). Glutamate ␦-2 receptors are normally present only on the PF spines where they are important for their innervation. After block of activity by tetrodotoxin, numerous new spines form in the CF domain and become innervated mainly by PFs; all spines, including those still innervated by the CFs, bear ␦-2 receptors. Thus, in the absence of activity, PFs gain a competitive advantage over CFs. The entire dendritic arbor becomes a uniform territory with the molecular cues associated with the PFs. To access their proper territory and maintain synaptic contacts, CFs must be active and locally repress the cues of the competitor afferents.

Research paper thumbnail of Spontaneous electrical activity and dendritic spine size in mature cerebellar Purkinje cells

European Journal of Neuroscience, 2005

Previous experiments have shown that in the mature cerebellum both blocking of spontaneous electr... more Previous experiments have shown that in the mature cerebellum both blocking of spontaneous electrical activity and destruction of the climbing fibres by a lesion of the inferior olive have a similar profound effect on the spine distribution on the proximal dendrites of the Purkinje cells. Many new spines develop that are largely innervated by parallel fibers. Here we show that blocking electrical activity leads to a significant decrease in size of the spines on the branchlets. We have also compared the size of the spines of the proximal dendritic domain that appear during activity block and after an inferior olive lesion. In this region also, the spines in the absence of activity are significantly smaller. In the proximal dendritic domain, the new spines that develop in the absence of activity are innervated by parallel fibers and are not significantly different in size from those of the branchlets, although they are shorter. Thus, the spontaneous activity of the cerebellar cortex is necessary not only to maintain the physiological spine distribution profile in the Purkinje cell dendritic tree, but also acts as a signal that prevents spines from shrinking.

Research paper thumbnail of SIBsFlankerManuscript 09082012-FS-vsm-FS2 ACC

Aberrant activity in brain regions underlying various aspects of executive cognition has been rep... more Aberrant activity in brain regions underlying various aspects of executive cognition has been reported in patients with schizophrenia and in their healthy relatives, suggesting an association with genetic liability. The aim of this study was to investigate brain responses to selective aspects of cognitive control in unaffected siblings who are at increased genetic risk of schizophrenia. 65 non-affected siblings, 70 patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, and 235 normal controls participated in this study. Blood-oxygen-Ievel-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging was conducted while participants performed a cognitive control task ("flanker task") to identify brain activity and connectivity associated with response inhibition and conflict monitoring and suppression. Behaviorally, similar to patients with schizophrenia, siblings were less accurate when inhibiting prepotent responses relative to normal controls.

Research paper thumbnail of SIBsFlankerSupplemental

Research paper thumbnail of SIBsFlankerManuscript 09082012-FS-vsm-FS2 ACC

Aberrant activity in brain regions underlying various aspects of executive cognition has been rep... more Aberrant activity in brain regions underlying various aspects of executive cognition has been reported in patients with schizophrenia and in their healthy relatives, suggesting an association with genetic liability. The aim of this study was to investigate brain responses to selective aspects of cognitive control in unaffected siblings who are at increased genetic risk of schizophrenia. 65 non-affected siblings, 70 patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, and 235 normal controls participated in this study. Blood-oxygen-Ievel-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging was conducted while participants performed a cognitive control task ("flanker task") to identify brain activity and connectivity associated with response inhibition and conflict monitoring and suppression. Behaviorally, similar to patients with schizophrenia, siblings were less accurate when inhibiting prepotent responses relative to normal controls.

Research paper thumbnail of Altered hippocampal-parahippocampal function during stimulus encoding: a potential indicator of genetic liability for schizophrenia

JAMA psychiatry, 2014

Declarative memory-the ability to learn, store, and retrieve information-has been consistently re... more Declarative memory-the ability to learn, store, and retrieve information-has been consistently reported to be altered in schizophrenia, and hippocampal-parahippocampal dysfunction has been implicated in this deficit. To elucidate the possible role of genetic risk factors in such findings, it is necessary to study healthy relatives of patients with schizophrenia who carry risk-associated genes but not the confounding factors related to the disorder. To investigate whether altered brain responses, particularly in the hippocampus and parahippocampus, during the encoding phase of a simple declarative memory task are also observed in unaffected siblings who are at increased genetic risk for schizophrenia. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used with a simple visual declarative memory paradigm to test for differences in neural activation across normal control participants, patients with schizophrenia, and their healthy siblings. This study was conducted at a research center and inc...

Research paper thumbnail of Treatment Delay in First-Episode Nonaffective Psychosis: A Pilot Study With African American Family Members and the Theory of Planned Behavior................. Michael T. Compton and Michelle L. Esterberg A Comparison of Statistical Models in Predicting Violence in Psychotic Illness.......... Stu...

Research paper thumbnail of Effects of modafinil on brain regions underlying cognitive and emotional information processing: An fMRI study in normal healthy volunteers

Research paper thumbnail of Tolcapone Improves Efficiency in Cortical Areas Underlying Working Memory in Patients With Schizophrenia

Research paper thumbnail of CAMK2A Genetic Variation Modulates Prefrontal Cortical Function during Working Memory across Adulthood

Research paper thumbnail of Effect of ZNF804A Gene, A Genome-wide Supported Psychosis Risk Variant, on Neural Activation During Cognitive Control

Research paper thumbnail of Tolcapone Enhances Cortical Efficiency During Attentional Control In Healthy Subjects

Research paper thumbnail of A Novel Intermediate Phenotype for Prefrontal Cortical Efficiency in Schizophrenia Independent of Working Memory

Research paper thumbnail of A Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) Study of a Risk Variant for Psychosis in ZNF804a

Research paper thumbnail of Altered Graph Theory Measures of Brain Networks in Patients with Schizophrenia: Potential Intermediate Phenotypes

Research paper thumbnail of Altered cortical network dynamics: a potential intermediate phenotype for schizophrenia and association with ZNF804A

Arch Gen Psychiatry, 2011

Studies have shown patterns of abnormal dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) functional connect... more Studies have shown patterns of abnormal dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) functional connectivity with other brain areas in schizophrenia and association of these patterns with a putative susceptibility gene (ZNF804A). However, whether these patterns are trait phenomena linked to genetic risk for illness is unclear. To test the hypotheses that altered DLPFC connectivity is (1) a familial, likely heritable feature of genetic risk for schizophrenia, (2) a novel intermediate phenotype independent of altered DLPFC engagement, and (3) selectively modulated by a polymorphism in ZNF804A. Cross-sectional case-control study using blood oxygen level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging during a working memory task and genotyping of rs1344706 in ZNF804A. Research center. A total of 402 subjects (153 cognitively normal controls, 171 healthy siblings of patients with schizophrenia, and 78 patients). Task-independent and task-dependent physiologic coupling between the DLPFC and other brain "target" regions investigated with (1) seeded connectivity and (2) psychophysiological interaction analysis. Siblings and patients showed greater DLPFC "inefficiency" than controls. Abnormal DLPFC functional coupling with the hippocampus and, to a lesser degree, the rest of the prefrontal cortex, was observed in patients and siblings when compared with controls using both connectivity analyses. Prefrontal activation and connectivity measures within siblings did not correlate, implying that they were independent phenomena. The ZNF804A genotype significantly modulated DLPFC coupling with the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex but not DLPFC activity in the control group. Similarly, ZNF804A genotype modulated right DLPFC-hippocampal formation coupling in siblings and patients. Coupling between the DLPFC and hippocampus is compromised in siblings of patients with schizophrenia and is independent of DLPFC engagement. The selective association with a single-nucleotide polymorphism in ZNF804A suggests that this intermediate phenotype proxies a distinct neural system mechanism related to genetic risk for schizophrenia and the biology of this gene.

Research paper thumbnail of Effects of Neuregulin 3 Genotype on Human Prefrontal Cortex Physiology

Journal of Neuroscience, 2014

The neuregulin 3 gene (NRG3) plays pleiotropic roles in neurodevelopment and is a putative suscep... more The neuregulin 3 gene (NRG3) plays pleiotropic roles in neurodevelopment and is a putative susceptibility locus for schizophrenia. Specifically, the T allele of NRG3 rs10748842 has been associated with illness risk, altered cognitive function, and the expression of a novel splice isoform in prefrontal cortex (PFC), but the neural system effects are unexplored. Here, we report an association between rs10748842 and PFC physiology as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging of human working memory performance, where a convincing link between increased genetic risk for schizophrenia and increased activation in some PFC areas has been established. In 410 control individuals (195 males, 215 females), we detected a highly significant effect of NRG3 genotype manifesting as an unanticipated increase in ventrolateral PFC activation in nonrisk-associated C allele carriers. An additional analysis including 78 patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (64 males, 14 females) and 123 unaffected siblings (53 males, 70 females) revealed a whole-brain significant genotype by group interaction in right dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC), manifesting as a relative activation increase in healthy controls and siblings (C > T/T) and as a hypoactivation in patients (T/T > C). These observed genotype-dependent effects in PFC were not explained by task performance and did not conform to established locales of prefrontal inefficiency linked to genetic risk for schizophrenia. Our data indicate a complex modulation of brain physiology by rs10748842, which does not fit the simple inefficiency model of risk association in DLPFC and suggests that other neurobiological mechanisms are involved.

Research paper thumbnail of Activation and Deactivation Patterns in Schizophrenic Patients Compared to Healthy Individuals During the Tower of London Task

Schizophrenia Research, 2008

Research paper thumbnail of A comparison of paroxetine versus paroxetine plus amisulpride in the treatment of dysthymic disorder: efficacy and psychosocial outcomes

Psychiatry Research, 2002

Dysthymic disorder is a chronic depressive condition with considerable psychosocial impairment. E... more Dysthymic disorder is a chronic depressive condition with considerable psychosocial impairment. Even if DD patients respond to various antidepressant medications, there has been little systematic study on antidepressant-refractory DD. Only a few trials have evaluated the effects of treatment on psychosocial functioning of dysthymic patients. In this 3-month, open-label study, 60 outpatients with DSM-IV criteria for dysthymic disorder who failed to respond to 3-month treatment with paroxetine 20 mg/day were randomly assigned to treatment with paroxetine 40 mg/day or paroxetine 20 mg/day plus amisulpride 50 mg/day. The effects of the two treatments were assessed for both mood symptoms (21-item Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression, Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale, Clinical Global Impression, severity and improvement) and psychosocial outcomes (DSM-IV Global Assessment of Functioning, Social Adaptation Self-evaluation Scale). Analysis of variance on all rating scales showed that both treatments were effective over this observation period. Response and remission rates did not differ in the treatment groups. A significantly greater psychosocial improvement was observed in the group receiving combined treatment compared with patients receiving paroxetine alone. Both treatments appeared to be effective in our sample of dysthymic subjects. Combined treatment with paroxetine and amisulpride resulted in a better outcome in terms of social functioning.

Research paper thumbnail of Neuropsychological correlates of reality distortion in schizophrenic patients

Psychiatry Research, 2006

The present study aims at exploring the relationship between content-related aspects of delusions... more The present study aims at exploring the relationship between content-related aspects of delusions and hallucinations in schizophrenia and the basic domains of cognition, controlling for the other clinical and demographic variables that could produce bias in the interpretation of the results. Seventy stable schizophrenic patients were evaluated through psychiatric assessment and a neuropsychological battery including tests on attention, memory, perceptual-motor speed and executive functions. We found that the severity of negative symptoms was strongly correlated with poor performance in almost all domains of cognitive functions, while only the attentional deficit was correlated with positive symptoms. The relationships between different cognitive domains and specific types of delusions and hallucinations showed that thought insertion, guilt, grandiose, religious and somatic delusions were associated with impairment in different cognitive functions (verbal and visual memory, attention and executive functions). Voices arguing and tactile hallucinations were correlated to delay-recall memory function. Our results suggest that no specific cognitive pattern is associated with typical-content delusions and hallucinations. On the basis of our findings, cognitive impairments associated with delusions and hallucinations, as measured by our battery, seem not to play a central role in the genesis and the maintenance of these symptoms, suggesting a more complex model of pathogenesis. D

Research paper thumbnail of Role of glutamate  -2 receptors in activity-dependent competition between heterologous afferent fibers

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2001

A principle that regulates detailed architecture in the brain is that active terminals have a com... more A principle that regulates detailed architecture in the brain is that active terminals have a competitive advantage over less active terminals in establishing synaptic connections. This principle is known to apply to fibers within a single neuronal population competing for a common target domain. Here we uncover an additional rule that applies when two neuronal populations compete for two contiguous territories. The cerebellar Purkinje cell dendrites have two different synaptic domains with spines innervated by two separate excitatory inputs, parallel fibers (PFs) and climbing fibers (CFs). Glutamate ␦-2 receptors are normally present only on the PF spines where they are important for their innervation. After block of activity by tetrodotoxin, numerous new spines form in the CF domain and become innervated mainly by PFs; all spines, including those still innervated by the CFs, bear ␦-2 receptors. Thus, in the absence of activity, PFs gain a competitive advantage over CFs. The entire dendritic arbor becomes a uniform territory with the molecular cues associated with the PFs. To access their proper territory and maintain synaptic contacts, CFs must be active and locally repress the cues of the competitor afferents.

Research paper thumbnail of Spontaneous electrical activity and dendritic spine size in mature cerebellar Purkinje cells

European Journal of Neuroscience, 2005

Previous experiments have shown that in the mature cerebellum both blocking of spontaneous electr... more Previous experiments have shown that in the mature cerebellum both blocking of spontaneous electrical activity and destruction of the climbing fibres by a lesion of the inferior olive have a similar profound effect on the spine distribution on the proximal dendrites of the Purkinje cells. Many new spines develop that are largely innervated by parallel fibers. Here we show that blocking electrical activity leads to a significant decrease in size of the spines on the branchlets. We have also compared the size of the spines of the proximal dendritic domain that appear during activity block and after an inferior olive lesion. In this region also, the spines in the absence of activity are significantly smaller. In the proximal dendritic domain, the new spines that develop in the absence of activity are innervated by parallel fibers and are not significantly different in size from those of the branchlets, although they are shorter. Thus, the spontaneous activity of the cerebellar cortex is necessary not only to maintain the physiological spine distribution profile in the Purkinje cell dendritic tree, but also acts as a signal that prevents spines from shrinking.

Research paper thumbnail of SIBsFlankerManuscript 09082012-FS-vsm-FS2 ACC

Aberrant activity in brain regions underlying various aspects of executive cognition has been rep... more Aberrant activity in brain regions underlying various aspects of executive cognition has been reported in patients with schizophrenia and in their healthy relatives, suggesting an association with genetic liability. The aim of this study was to investigate brain responses to selective aspects of cognitive control in unaffected siblings who are at increased genetic risk of schizophrenia. 65 non-affected siblings, 70 patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, and 235 normal controls participated in this study. Blood-oxygen-Ievel-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging was conducted while participants performed a cognitive control task ("flanker task") to identify brain activity and connectivity associated with response inhibition and conflict monitoring and suppression. Behaviorally, similar to patients with schizophrenia, siblings were less accurate when inhibiting prepotent responses relative to normal controls.

Research paper thumbnail of SIBsFlankerSupplemental

Research paper thumbnail of SIBsFlankerManuscript 09082012-FS-vsm-FS2 ACC

Aberrant activity in brain regions underlying various aspects of executive cognition has been rep... more Aberrant activity in brain regions underlying various aspects of executive cognition has been reported in patients with schizophrenia and in their healthy relatives, suggesting an association with genetic liability. The aim of this study was to investigate brain responses to selective aspects of cognitive control in unaffected siblings who are at increased genetic risk of schizophrenia. 65 non-affected siblings, 70 patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, and 235 normal controls participated in this study. Blood-oxygen-Ievel-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging was conducted while participants performed a cognitive control task ("flanker task") to identify brain activity and connectivity associated with response inhibition and conflict monitoring and suppression. Behaviorally, similar to patients with schizophrenia, siblings were less accurate when inhibiting prepotent responses relative to normal controls.

Research paper thumbnail of Altered hippocampal-parahippocampal function during stimulus encoding: a potential indicator of genetic liability for schizophrenia

JAMA psychiatry, 2014

Declarative memory-the ability to learn, store, and retrieve information-has been consistently re... more Declarative memory-the ability to learn, store, and retrieve information-has been consistently reported to be altered in schizophrenia, and hippocampal-parahippocampal dysfunction has been implicated in this deficit. To elucidate the possible role of genetic risk factors in such findings, it is necessary to study healthy relatives of patients with schizophrenia who carry risk-associated genes but not the confounding factors related to the disorder. To investigate whether altered brain responses, particularly in the hippocampus and parahippocampus, during the encoding phase of a simple declarative memory task are also observed in unaffected siblings who are at increased genetic risk for schizophrenia. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used with a simple visual declarative memory paradigm to test for differences in neural activation across normal control participants, patients with schizophrenia, and their healthy siblings. This study was conducted at a research center and inc...

Research paper thumbnail of Treatment Delay in First-Episode Nonaffective Psychosis: A Pilot Study With African American Family Members and the Theory of Planned Behavior................. Michael T. Compton and Michelle L. Esterberg A Comparison of Statistical Models in Predicting Violence in Psychotic Illness.......... Stu...

Research paper thumbnail of Effects of modafinil on brain regions underlying cognitive and emotional information processing: An fMRI study in normal healthy volunteers

Research paper thumbnail of Tolcapone Improves Efficiency in Cortical Areas Underlying Working Memory in Patients With Schizophrenia

Research paper thumbnail of CAMK2A Genetic Variation Modulates Prefrontal Cortical Function during Working Memory across Adulthood

Research paper thumbnail of Effect of ZNF804A Gene, A Genome-wide Supported Psychosis Risk Variant, on Neural Activation During Cognitive Control

Research paper thumbnail of Tolcapone Enhances Cortical Efficiency During Attentional Control In Healthy Subjects

Research paper thumbnail of A Novel Intermediate Phenotype for Prefrontal Cortical Efficiency in Schizophrenia Independent of Working Memory

Research paper thumbnail of A Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) Study of a Risk Variant for Psychosis in ZNF804a

Research paper thumbnail of Altered Graph Theory Measures of Brain Networks in Patients with Schizophrenia: Potential Intermediate Phenotypes

Research paper thumbnail of Altered cortical network dynamics: a potential intermediate phenotype for schizophrenia and association with ZNF804A

Arch Gen Psychiatry, 2011

Studies have shown patterns of abnormal dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) functional connect... more Studies have shown patterns of abnormal dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) functional connectivity with other brain areas in schizophrenia and association of these patterns with a putative susceptibility gene (ZNF804A). However, whether these patterns are trait phenomena linked to genetic risk for illness is unclear. To test the hypotheses that altered DLPFC connectivity is (1) a familial, likely heritable feature of genetic risk for schizophrenia, (2) a novel intermediate phenotype independent of altered DLPFC engagement, and (3) selectively modulated by a polymorphism in ZNF804A. Cross-sectional case-control study using blood oxygen level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging during a working memory task and genotyping of rs1344706 in ZNF804A. Research center. A total of 402 subjects (153 cognitively normal controls, 171 healthy siblings of patients with schizophrenia, and 78 patients). Task-independent and task-dependent physiologic coupling between the DLPFC and other brain "target" regions investigated with (1) seeded connectivity and (2) psychophysiological interaction analysis. Siblings and patients showed greater DLPFC "inefficiency" than controls. Abnormal DLPFC functional coupling with the hippocampus and, to a lesser degree, the rest of the prefrontal cortex, was observed in patients and siblings when compared with controls using both connectivity analyses. Prefrontal activation and connectivity measures within siblings did not correlate, implying that they were independent phenomena. The ZNF804A genotype significantly modulated DLPFC coupling with the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex but not DLPFC activity in the control group. Similarly, ZNF804A genotype modulated right DLPFC-hippocampal formation coupling in siblings and patients. Coupling between the DLPFC and hippocampus is compromised in siblings of patients with schizophrenia and is independent of DLPFC engagement. The selective association with a single-nucleotide polymorphism in ZNF804A suggests that this intermediate phenotype proxies a distinct neural system mechanism related to genetic risk for schizophrenia and the biology of this gene.

Research paper thumbnail of Effects of Neuregulin 3 Genotype on Human Prefrontal Cortex Physiology

Journal of Neuroscience, 2014

The neuregulin 3 gene (NRG3) plays pleiotropic roles in neurodevelopment and is a putative suscep... more The neuregulin 3 gene (NRG3) plays pleiotropic roles in neurodevelopment and is a putative susceptibility locus for schizophrenia. Specifically, the T allele of NRG3 rs10748842 has been associated with illness risk, altered cognitive function, and the expression of a novel splice isoform in prefrontal cortex (PFC), but the neural system effects are unexplored. Here, we report an association between rs10748842 and PFC physiology as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging of human working memory performance, where a convincing link between increased genetic risk for schizophrenia and increased activation in some PFC areas has been established. In 410 control individuals (195 males, 215 females), we detected a highly significant effect of NRG3 genotype manifesting as an unanticipated increase in ventrolateral PFC activation in nonrisk-associated C allele carriers. An additional analysis including 78 patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (64 males, 14 females) and 123 unaffected siblings (53 males, 70 females) revealed a whole-brain significant genotype by group interaction in right dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC), manifesting as a relative activation increase in healthy controls and siblings (C > T/T) and as a hypoactivation in patients (T/T > C). These observed genotype-dependent effects in PFC were not explained by task performance and did not conform to established locales of prefrontal inefficiency linked to genetic risk for schizophrenia. Our data indicate a complex modulation of brain physiology by rs10748842, which does not fit the simple inefficiency model of risk association in DLPFC and suggests that other neurobiological mechanisms are involved.

Research paper thumbnail of Activation and Deactivation Patterns in Schizophrenic Patients Compared to Healthy Individuals During the Tower of London Task

Schizophrenia Research, 2008

Research paper thumbnail of A comparison of paroxetine versus paroxetine plus amisulpride in the treatment of dysthymic disorder: efficacy and psychosocial outcomes

Psychiatry Research, 2002

Dysthymic disorder is a chronic depressive condition with considerable psychosocial impairment. E... more Dysthymic disorder is a chronic depressive condition with considerable psychosocial impairment. Even if DD patients respond to various antidepressant medications, there has been little systematic study on antidepressant-refractory DD. Only a few trials have evaluated the effects of treatment on psychosocial functioning of dysthymic patients. In this 3-month, open-label study, 60 outpatients with DSM-IV criteria for dysthymic disorder who failed to respond to 3-month treatment with paroxetine 20 mg/day were randomly assigned to treatment with paroxetine 40 mg/day or paroxetine 20 mg/day plus amisulpride 50 mg/day. The effects of the two treatments were assessed for both mood symptoms (21-item Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression, Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale, Clinical Global Impression, severity and improvement) and psychosocial outcomes (DSM-IV Global Assessment of Functioning, Social Adaptation Self-evaluation Scale). Analysis of variance on all rating scales showed that both treatments were effective over this observation period. Response and remission rates did not differ in the treatment groups. A significantly greater psychosocial improvement was observed in the group receiving combined treatment compared with patients receiving paroxetine alone. Both treatments appeared to be effective in our sample of dysthymic subjects. Combined treatment with paroxetine and amisulpride resulted in a better outcome in terms of social functioning.

Research paper thumbnail of Neuropsychological correlates of reality distortion in schizophrenic patients

Psychiatry Research, 2006

The present study aims at exploring the relationship between content-related aspects of delusions... more The present study aims at exploring the relationship between content-related aspects of delusions and hallucinations in schizophrenia and the basic domains of cognition, controlling for the other clinical and demographic variables that could produce bias in the interpretation of the results. Seventy stable schizophrenic patients were evaluated through psychiatric assessment and a neuropsychological battery including tests on attention, memory, perceptual-motor speed and executive functions. We found that the severity of negative symptoms was strongly correlated with poor performance in almost all domains of cognitive functions, while only the attentional deficit was correlated with positive symptoms. The relationships between different cognitive domains and specific types of delusions and hallucinations showed that thought insertion, guilt, grandiose, religious and somatic delusions were associated with impairment in different cognitive functions (verbal and visual memory, attention and executive functions). Voices arguing and tactile hallucinations were correlated to delay-recall memory function. Our results suggest that no specific cognitive pattern is associated with typical-content delusions and hallucinations. On the basis of our findings, cognitive impairments associated with delusions and hallucinations, as measured by our battery, seem not to play a central role in the genesis and the maintenance of these symptoms, suggesting a more complex model of pathogenesis. D