NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL, OLFACTORY, AND HYGIENE DEFICITS IN MEN WITH NEGATIVE SYMPTOM SCHIZOPHRENIA

Associations between symptom subtypes, life skills, olfactory identifi cation, and neuropsychological ability were investigated in patients w ith schizophrenia and related to observations of poor personal hygiene and implied functional compromise of orbitofrontal integrity. Twenty- seven men with chronic schizophrenia were assessed using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale for Schizophrenia and the Life Skills Prof ile, Performance on the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identificatio n Test (UPSIT), the Modified Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (MWCST), dela yed response/alternation, and memory tasks derived from the Wechsler M emory Scale-Revised (WMS-R) was also compared to that of an age-, sex- , and le-matched control group. Patient UPSIT, MWCST, and WMS-R perfor mance was significantly impaired in comparison to controls. Poor UPSIT performance and poor self-care were significantly associated with neg ative symptoms, Also, UPSIT ability was associated with performance on the MWCST in both patients and controls, whereas an association with performance on the WMS-R was only found in normal subjects rather than in the patients with schizophrenia, The importance of these findings to postulated mechanisms involving prefrontal rather than mediotempora l lobe (MTL) function in schizophrenia are discussed, as is the releva nce of the use of smell identification ability to subtype identificati on and rehabilitative strategies. (C) 1996 Society of Biological Psych iatry