Executive functions and cognitive subprocesses in patients with obstructive sleep apnoea.

In recent years, special interest has been focused on impairments of executive functions in patients with obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS). However, the majority of studies have not clearly separated deficits in executive functions from impairments in other cognitive processes involved in task solving. In the present study, working memory (WM) functions of 20 patients with OSAS were compared with those of 10 age-, sex- and education-matched healthy subjects.

Feedback about previous action improves executive functioning in schizophrenia: An analysis of maze solving behaviour.

Disturbances of executive functions (EF) in schizophrenia have received special attention during the past years, but there is still an ongoing debate whether impairment in EF tasks can be linked to deficits of EF themselves or if they rather reflect impairment of other cognitive functions such as working memory processes that are additionally required for task solving. In the present study, we analyzed whether impairments in the maintenance of previous processing assumed to be related to working memory contribute to the impairments in EF tasks seen in schizophrenia. Twenty-five schizophrenic patients treated with atypical antipsychotic agents and 25 healthy controls matched according to age, sex, and education were instructed to solve novel two-dimensional maze tasks by steering a pen through a system of paths.

Executive function and cognitive subprocesses in first-episode, drug-naive schizophrenia: an analysis of N-back performance.

Objective: This study investigated changes in the cognitive architecture of N-back performance in schizophrenia.

Method: N-back performance of 12 patients with first-episode, drug-naive schizophrenia and matched healthy comparison subjects was studied in a reaction-time decomposition paradigm.

Results: Imposition of a working memory load led to a significant drop in response accuracy in patients.