Front Psychiatry
November 2011
Schizophrenia is a disorder with a large number of clinical, neurobiological, and cognitive manifestations, none of which is invariably present. However it appears to be a single nosological entity. This article considers the likely characteristics of a pathology capable of such diverse consequences.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCogn Neuropsychiatry
January 2011
Introduction: Schizophrenia causes clinically conspicuous impairment of syntax and semantics as part of the disorganisation syndrome; however, little is known regarding its effect on the phonological stage of speech, where word meanings are resolved into speech imagery.
Methods: We used a "tongue-twister" task to probe phonological speech production and its clinical associations in six schizophrenia patients and 16 controls.
Results: Errors induced by phonological similarity were more common in the patients (p=.
Disordered time perception has been reported in schizophrenia. We investigated time perception dysfunction and its neuropsychological correlates in patients with schizophrenia. Participants comprised 38 patients and 38 age- and sex-matched healthy volunteers who were compared in an auditory temporal bisection paradigm using two interval ranges (a 400/800 ms condition and a 1000/2000 ms condition).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFamiliarity with a speaker's voice has been shown to enhance its auditory processing, implicating physiological effects at the level of the auditory cortex, although auditory cortical involvement has not previously been demonstrated. Eleven healthy right-handed male participants performed two tasks during blood oxygenation level-dependent functional MRI at 1.5 T.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPeople with schizophrenia have been categorised into three groups: those with full insight (aware, correct attributers); those aware of being unwell, but who misattributed their symptoms (aware, incorrect attributers); and those unaware of being ill (unaware). Cluster analysis of 'awareness of illness'and 'relabelling of symptoms'scores on the Schedule for the Assessment of Insight confirmed three distinct subgroups. The unaware group were impaired on executive and memory tests, whereas those in the aware, misattributing group were cognitively intact.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Analogies Understanding Test (AUT) was developed as a brief cognitive screening task of executive problem solving. A few of the test items at the beginning are "facilitated" as a means of engaging patients. Individuals with schizophrenia and mild Alzheimer's Disease (AD) made significantly less correct responses than their control groups.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe electrochemistry of two new 1,7-diaryl C(60) phenylated derivatives is explored in THF at various temperatures (from 25 to -90 degrees C). While at room temperature their voltammetric response is that typically shown by fairly stable species, when the temperature drops a very high electrochemically induced reactivity is evidenced. The investigation of the voltammetric patterns supported by an extensive use of digital simulation techniques finally led to the formulation of a reaction mechanism that includes electrochemically-induced migration of the phenyl groups as a possible explanation of the observed behavior.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe deficits of attention contribute significantly to the clinical picture of functional disability seen in schizophrenia, but there is no consensus as to whether this cognitive function can be fractionated to allow further characterisation of the impairment. We examined fifteen patients with chronic schizophrenia and fifteen controls using paired tasks designed to measure four hypothetical aspects of attentional control: the ability to focus attention, to resist distraction, to shift attention, and to divide attention. The group with schizophrenia showed a significant improvement in accuracy on a digit span repetition task when a simultaneous box-crossing task was added (divided attention condition).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAust N Z J Psychiatry
October 2003
Cognitive analytic therapy (CAT) is an integrative, interpersonal model of therapy predicated on a radically social concept of self, developed over recent years in the UK by Anthony Ryle. A CAT-based model of psychotic disorder has been developed much more recently based on encouraging early experience in this area. The model describes and accounts for many psychotic experiences and symptoms in terms of distorted, amplified or muddled enactments of normal or 'neurotic' reciprocal role procedures (RRPs) and of damage at a meta-procedural level to the structures of the self.
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