BACKGROUND The prevalence of negative symptoms in schizophrenic patients seems to be an important indicator for treatment response and prognosis. Although negative symptoms have often been attributed to frontal lobe anomalies, neuropsychological and anatomical findings do not explicitly support this assumption. Since knowledge about the cerebral correlate of negative symptoms in schizophrenia m...

Impaired perspective was studied in schizophrenic and thought-disordered patients to analyze hypotheses about its role in thought disorder. Eighty-three schizophrenic patients, other psychotic patients, and nonpsychotic patients judged the adequacy of their own and others' verbalizations under several different conditions. Thought-disordered patients had significantly more impaired perspective ...

OBJECTIVE Several studies have provided evidence for the claim that a subgroup of (schizophrenic) patients with current delusions share a jumping to conclusions (JTC) bias. The primary aim of the present study was to investigate whether currently deluded and non-deluded schizophrenic patients perform differently on three tasks tapping probabilistic reasoning. METHOD Probabilistic reasoning wa...

Objective: Facial expressions seem to be closely related to limbic processes. Abnormal facial expressions were described often in schizophrenic patients, but the specific nature of this disturbance is still unclear. Since facial activity in total seems to be not specifically disturbed in schizophrenics, analysis of movement details during facial expressions could be a more promising tool. Metho...

The Motor-Free Visual Perception Test (MVPT) was administered to 15 chronic schizophrenic patients and 15 normal controls, ages 40 to 60, to see whether, perceptual deficits would be found on non-motor tasks. Groups significantly affected performance on the MVPT, as did occupational status. In the schizophrenic group only, efficiency of intellectual functioning was positively related to how wel...

We examined social problem solving in schizophrenia. Twenty-seven schizophrenic patients in an acute hospital, 19 patients with bipolar disease, and 17 demographically matched nonpatient controls were tested on an empirically developed problem-solving battery that assessed the ability to generate solutions to problems, the ability to evaluate the effectiveness of solutions, and the ability to i...

Subjective and objective burdens of the carers of schizophrenic and bipolar affective disorder patients were assessed. Burden was found to be higher among the carers of schizophrenic, young, male, low income and unemployed patients. This study shows a more comprehensive way of assessing family burden with due emphasis on positive mental health and coping resources of the carers.

Electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe was performed in chronic schizophrenic patients to treat the auditory hallucinations. During electrical stimulation, there appeared different kinds of hallucinations. The characteristics of the hallucinations produced by the temporal lobe stimulation greatly differ from those of the schizophrenic hallucinations. Visual and auditory hallucinations by t...

Distinction between true negative and depressive symptoms in schizophrenia is difficult. In the present study we seek to establish the psychological profile of depression-prone schizophrenic patients. We addressed the issue by comparing the expression of psychological indices, such as the feelings of being in control of events, anxiety, mood, and the style of coping with stress in depressive an...

~ ! , -" .~ link these neuropathologic findings to pathogenic processes and the clinical dimensions of the disease. Two questions that have not been resolved, however, are 1) whether some of the neuropathologic findings associated with schizophrenia are a consequence of the disease or of the substantial treatment that most patients receive in the course of their illness and 2) whether the neuro...