Similarities in cognitive impairment between recent- onset and chronic schizophrenia patients: a consideration for the neurodevelopmental hypothesis.

Impairment in attention, memory, processing speed and executive functions have been described in patients with schizophrenia. Such impairments can be observed in early stages of the disease and in chronic patients; discrepancy in findings regarding the cognitive deficits at different stages of the illness keeps the debate about schizophrenia as a neurodegenerative condition which courses with continuous deterioration, or if deficits remain stable, as the neurodevelopmental hypothesis suggests.

Immunohistochemical analysis of caspase expression in the brains of individuals with obesity or overweight.

Mechanisms underlying the negative effects of obesity on the brain are still unknown. Obesity is associated with oxidative stress in the brain and neuroinflammation that promotes neurodegenerative diseases. Chronic low-grade neuroinflammation in obesity could be associated with lower volumes of gray matter and lower neuronal density.

Understanding the relationship between apathy, cognition and functional outcome in schizophrenia: The significance of an ecological assessment.

In recent years there has been an increasing interest in understanding the role apathy plays in mediating the relationship between cognitive impairment and functional outcome. In general, most studies measure cognition with traditional cognitive tests that give explicit instructions and guide the participants toward generating a response. However, given that apathy is defined by a decrease in self-initiated behavior, it is crucial to evaluate cognition with ecological tasks that do not explicitly direct the patient´s motivation to generate behaviors to assess the actual effect.

Structural Brain Changes Associated with Overweight and Obesity.

Obesity is a global health problem with a broad set of comorbidities, such as malnutrition, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, systemic hypertension, heart failure, and kidney failure. This review describes recent findings of neuroimaging and two studies of cell density regarding the roles of overnutrition-induced hypothalamic inflammation in neurodegeneration. These studies provided consistent evidence of smaller cortical thickness or reduction in the gray matter volume in people with overweight and obesity; however, the investigated brain regions varied across the studies.

Impairment of novelty-related theta oscillations and P3a in never medicated first-episode psychosis patients.

We explored the neurophysiological activity underlying auditory novelty detection in antipsychotic-naive patients with a first episode of psychosis (FEP). Fifteen patients with a non-affective FEP and 13 healthy controls underwent an active involuntary attention task along with an EEG acquisition. Time-frequency representations of power, phase locking, and fronto-parietal connectivity were calculated.

Cognitive Reserve and Executive Functions in Adults with Type 2 Diabetes.

Background: Adults with type two diabetes mellitus (DM2) show cognitive deficits within the executive function domain. The detrimental effects of DM2 over executive function (EF) performance may be mediated by factors such as cognitive reserve (CR). CR mediates cognitive performance by delaying the appearance of clinical symptoms from subjacent brain pathology or attenuating the severity of such symptoms.

Neurocognition in Bipolar and Depressive Schizoaffective Disorder: A Comparison with Schizophrenia.

Introduction: Schizoaffective disorder (SA) is classified into bipolar (bSA) and depressive (dSA) subtypes. Although clinical differences between both have been reported, there is no clear information regarding their specific cognitive profile.

Objective: To compare neurocognition between SA subtypes and schizophrenia (SC).

Cognitive Impairment in Never-Medicated Individuals on the Schizophrenia Spectrum.

This cohort study examines cognition in never-medicated individuals at different stages of the illness.

Processing speed differences between schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder: A pilot study.

We aimed to compare processing speed (PS) and its subcomponents in schizophrenia (SC) and schizoaffective disorder (SA). Thirty-five patients were divided into two groups (SC=18; SA=17). PS tasks from the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery Central/South America version were used.

A Postmortem Study of Frontal and Temporal Gyri Thickness and Cell Number in Human Obesity.

Objective: This study aimed to compare cortex thickness and neuronal cell density in postmortem brain tissue from people with overweight or obesity and normal weight.

Methods: The cortex thickness and neuron density of eight donors with overweight or obesity (mean = 31.6 kg/m ; SD = 4.

Social Cognition in Schizophrenia, Unaffected Relatives and Ultra- High Risk for Psychosis: What Do We Currently Know?

Introduction: Schizophrenia patients show impairments in social cognition (SC), which is a set of cognitive processes that underlie social interactions. The research about SC in schizophrenia has identified four main domains: Theory of mind (ToM), social perception, attributional style and emotional processing. The present review aims to summarize the most recent and consistent findings about SC in patients with schizophrenia, unaffected relatives and ultra-high risk for psychosis individuals (UHR), as well as its association with clinical variables and functional outcome.

Mismatch Negativity reduction in the left cortical regions in first-episode psychosis and in individuals at ultra high-risk for psychosis.

Mismatch Negativity (MMN), an electrophysiological component that represents sensory memory processing, has been proposed as a potential vulnerability marker for psychosis. Some studies have reported a more evident MMN amplitude reduction in the left cortical regions in patients with schizophrenia. Little is known about this asymmetric pattern in patients in their first episode of psychosis (FEP) and individuals at ultra-high risk for psychosis (UHR).

Reduced P3a amplitudes in antipsychotic naïve first-episode psychosis patients and individuals at clinical high-risk for psychosis.

Event related potentials (ERP) associated with early sensory information processing have been proposed as possible vulnerability markers for psychosis. Compared to other ERPs reported in schizophrenia research, like Mismatch Negativity (MMN), little is known about P3a, an ERP related to novelty detection. The aim of this study was to analyze the MMN-P3a complex in 20 antipsychotic naïve first-episode psychosis patients (FEP), 23 antipsychotic naïve individuals at clinical high-risk for psychosis (CHR) and 24 healthy controls.

[Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and schizophrenia: a revision].

The Mismatch Negativity (MMN) is an auditory Event- Related Potential which is generated as an automatic cerebral response to any change in the auditory stimulation that exceeds a limit corresponding to the discrimination threshold. It has been widely and consistently reported that patients with recent and chronic schizophrenia display smaller MMN amplitudes, suggesting that this component may be related with alteration in sensory memory and stimuli integration capacities, which seem to increase with the disease progression. Recently, new research areas have emerged, and studies of MMN of relatives of patients with schizophrenia have been conducted in order to assess the MMN efficacy as an endophenotype.