ASSESSMENT OF FRONTAL-LOBE FUNCTIONING IN SCHIZOPHRENIA AND UNIPOLAR MAJOR DEPRESSION

Citation
P. Franke et al., ASSESSMENT OF FRONTAL-LOBE FUNCTIONING IN SCHIZOPHRENIA AND UNIPOLAR MAJOR DEPRESSION, Psychopathology, 26(2), 1993, pp. 76-84
Citations number
45
Categorie Soggetti
Psychiatry,Psychiatry
Journal title
ISSN journal
02544962
Volume
26
Issue
2
Year of publication
1993
Pages
76 - 84
Database
ISI
SICI code
0254-4962(1993)26:2<76:AOFFIS>2.0.ZU;2-U
Abstract
This study has used neuropsychological tasks - Wisconsin Card Sort (WC ST), Trail Making (TMT) A and B, Verbal Fluency, Digit Span - to compa re acute and currently off-medication schizophrenics, patients with un ipolar nonpsychotic major depression and healthy controls. Both patien t groups differed significantly from healthy controls in their neurops ychological performance. Furthermore there was only little (quantitati ve) difference between schizophrenics and depressed patients in the fr ontal lobe associated tasks: WCST. TMT and Verbal Fluency. Depressed p atients tended to perform worse than schizophrenics on Digit Span, a t ask hypothesized to involve other than frontal areas of the brain. Alt hough the group of depressed patients was older than the schizophrenic sample, the effect of age may not totally explain the findings. The r esults indicate that there do exist disturbances in frontal lobe cogni tive functioning in schizophrenia and depression. Symptomatology (SANS /SAPS) and cognitive functioning in the schizophrenic group revealed o nly a trend for negative symptoms to be associated with worse performa nce in the WCST, but were significantly correlated with negative as we ll as positive symptoms on the TMT.