Effects of childhood trauma on working memory in affective and non-affective psychotic disorders.

Childhood trauma is a significant risk factor for the development of psychotic disorders, and may influence executive brain functions. We thus set out to investigate the long-term effects of childhood trauma exposure on brain function of adult chronic patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and (psychotic) bipolar-I disorder while performing a standard 2/0-back working memory task. Participants were 50 cases diagnosed with schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder (SCZ), 42 cases with bipolar-I disorder (BD), and 47 healthy controls (HC).

Diurnal cortisol variation and cortisol response to an MRI stressor in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Markers of HPA axis function, including diurnal cortisol rhythm and cortisol responses to stress or pharmacological manipulation, are increasingly reported as disrupted in schizophrenia (SZ) and bipolar disorder (BD). However, there has been no direct comparison of cortisol responses to stress in SZ and BD in the same study, and associations between cortisol dysfunction and illness characteristics remain unclear. In this study we used spline embedded linear mixed models to examine cortisol levels of SZ and BD participants at waking, during the first 45min after waking (representing the cortisol awakening response; CAR), during the period of rapid cortisol decline post the awakening response, and in reaction to a stressor (MRI scan), relative to healthy controls (HC).

Shared intermediate phenotypes for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder: neuroanatomical features of subtypes distinguished by executive dysfunction.

Background: Shared genetic vulnerability for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder may be associated with common neuroanatomical features. In view of the evidence for working memory dysfunction as a candidate intermediate phenotype for both disorders, we explored neuroanatomical distinctions between subtypes defined according to working memory (n-back task) performance.

Methods: We analyzed T1-weighted MRI scans for patients with schizophrenia-spectrum disorder, bipolar-I disorder (BD-I) and healthy controls.

Task-related fronto-striatal functional connectivity during working memory performance in schizophrenia.

Working memory (WM) deficits and associated brain dysfunction are among the most well replicated candidate endophenotypic processes in schizophrenia. However, previous studies demonstrate inconsistent over- and under-activation of dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal cortices (DLPFC; VLPFC), inferior parietal lobule (IPL) during WM performance, as well as subcortical structures including the striatum, and dysfunctional connectivity among fronto-striatal regions in schizophrenia. However, no previous study has investigated task-related functional connectivity (FC) of DLPFC and striatal regions using a seed-based method; here we employed this method to assess patterns of cortical and subcortical functional connectivity among WM structures during a standard 2-back WM task performed by 28 schizophrenia (SZ) and 28 healthy controls (HC).

Cognitive regulation of negative affect in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Schizophrenia (SZ) and bipolar disorder (BD) exhibit common cognitive deficits that may impede the capacity for self-regulating affect. We examined the use of particular cognitive strategies for regulating negative affect in SZ and BD, and their associations with levels of mood symptomatology. Participants were 126 SZ, 97 BD, and 81 healthy controls (HC) who completed the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ), the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) and the Hypomanic Personality Scale (HPS).

Adaptive Associations between Social Cognition and Emotion Regulation are Absent in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder.

Schizophrenia (SZ) and bipolar disorder (BD) are associated with impairments in facial emotion perception and Theory of Mind (ToM). These social cognitive skills deficits may be related to a reduced capacity to effectively regulate one's own emotions according to the social context. We therefore set out to examine the relationship between social cognitive abilities and the use of cognitive strategies for regulating negative emotion in SZ and BD.