Publications by authors named "Nachum Katz"

Introduction: In patients with schizophrenia the most impaired competence is cognition. However, the sociodemographic and medical contributors to the various neurocognitive deficits have yet to be determined.

Objectives: To assess the impact of age, physical diseases, anticholinergic medications, gender and level of education on psychotic inpatients' cognitive capabilities.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The interplay between the immune system and behaviour is of increasing interest in psychiatry research. Specifically, accumulating data points to a link between inflammation and psychopathology, including affective symptomatology. We investigated the association between inflammation and affective polarity in psychiatric inpatients who were hospitalized due to an affective exacerbation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Epilepsy is common in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and intellectual disabilities (ID). Antiepileptic medications, such as valproic acid (VPA), were associated with changes in BMI, metabolic syndrome, dyslipidemia, and hyperinsulinemia. This study aimed to investigate how epilepsy and antiepileptic treatments affect BMI, fasting blood glucose (FBG), and total cholesterol of individuals with ASD or ID.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This article reviews four of the milder but still bothersome side effects of clozapine that are fairly frequent and may have a negative impact on patients' compliance with the treatment regime. We reviewed the available literature on the rate and management of four non-life-threatening side effects of clozapine, including hypersalivation, constipation, tachycardia, and nocturnal enuresis. We found a variety of pharmacological and behavioral strategies to manage these four side effects.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Executive attention (EA) is a core-construct of working memory (WM) capacity. EA performance is directly related to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) activation, a neural mechanism that is dysfunctional in schizophrenia. We examined the differences in particular types of EA failure in schizophrenia patients and healthy controls.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulties understanding and using nonverbal communication. Handshaking is an expressive gesture that requires adequate skills for social interaction and, because of its highly emotional characteristic for patients with ASD, may reflect their ability for social responsiveness. Unlike eye contact or complex social behavior, this gesture has not been studied in the past.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: We retrospectively assessed the effect of social-, cognitive-, and task-oriented functioning levels at hospital discharge on the readmission rate of patients with schizophrenia.

Method: We assessed the functional capability of 71 inpatients (37 men and 34 women), mean age 41.3 (standard deviation = 11.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: McGurk effect is a perceptual phenomenon that reflects the integration of visual and auditory information during speech perception. Using McGurk effect, the authors examined the audiovisual integration in adolescents and adults with schizophrenia as compared with healthy volunteers.

Sampling And Methods: Thirty hospitalized patients with schizophrenia and 20 age-matched healthy controls were examined for perception of ambiguous audiovisual stimuli.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Asperger's syndrome (AS) has been of much interest in the last two decades. Most people with AS are law abiding and are not involved in any violence. Over the years, however, there is increasing evidence of violent behavior and criminal acts committed by some people with AS.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Most data imply that dopaminergic transmission is essential for proper hypothalamic-mediated core temperature regulation. Altered central dopaminergic transmission is suggested to be involved in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Thus, hypothetically, schizophrenia patients might be at increased risk of developing thermoregulatory dysregulation manifested by alterations in core temperature, as well as in peripheral tissue, the temperature of which has been shown to correlate with core temperature (e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Antipsychotic drugs (APDs) can decrease core body temperature in schizophrenia patients. Core temperature may correlate with corneal temperature and thus, we hypothesized that neuroleptic-treated schizophrenia patients would display lower corneal temperature compared with drug-free patients. Corneal temperature of 12 typical APD-treated and 9 drug-free male schizophrenia patients was assessed using a FLIR thermal imaging camera.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Schizophrenia patients may exhibit altered body temperature. We hypothesized that drug-free patients may have a higher corneal temperature than normal subjects. The corneal temperature of seven remitted drug-free schizophrenia outpatients and seven healthy volunteers was evaluated with a flir thermal imaging camera.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF