Nonresponding schizophrenia: Differentiation by neurological soft signs and neuropsychological tests

Schizophrenia patients have higher scores on neurological soft-signs (NSS) and show greater deficits on a variety of neuropsychological tests than nor mal control subjects and mixed groups of psychiatric patients. Among chroni c schizophrenia patients it is unclear which of these types of deficits mos t strongly differentiates patients who remain consistently symptomatic in s pite of treatment with several conventional neuroleptics (nonresponders) as compared with relapsing chronic schizophrenia patients who improve substan tially with treatment (relative responders), In this study, 25 nonresponder s and 20 relative responders to conventional neuroleptics were compared on an NSS battery and a limited number of neuropsychological tests, which eval uated deficits influenced by functioning of frontal and nonfrontal brain ar eas. NSS scores showed the largest difference between relative responders a nd nonresponders, and statistical analyses suggested that NSS scores were t he strongest differentiator between the two groups of chronic schizophrenia patients. Scores differentiating the two groups involved deficits influenc ed by both frontal and nonfrontal functioning. A predominance of negative s ymptoms in the current clinical picture was highly correlated with high NSS scores.