Does sex influence the relation between symptoms and neurocognitive functions in schizophrenia?

Objective: A secondary analysis of our data to investigate if sex influence s the specificity of the relationship between each of the 3 clinical syndro mes (i.e., reality distortion, disorganization and psychomotor poverty) in schizophrenia and the neurocognitive functions that are thought to represen t regional brain functions. Patients and design: Fifty-seven male and 30 fe male patients with a DSM-III-R diagnosis of schizophrenia were rated on the Scale for Assessment of Negative Symptoms and the Scale for Assessment of Positive Symptoms to derive scores for psychomotor poverty, disorganization , and reality distortion syndromes. All subjects completed a battery of neu ropsychological tests purported to assess functioning of left temporal, rig ht temporal, left basal frontal, right basal frontal, and dorsolateral pref rontal colter. Results: Correlation coefficients between syndrome scores an d neuropsychological measures showed only word fluency (left frontal functi oning) to have a statistically significant association with psychomotor pov erty in women (p < 0.01). This relation was specific to psychomotor poverty syndrome. No relations between neurocognitive measures and symptoms were s een in men. Conclusions: The lack of specific relations between symptom dim ensions in schizophrenia may be influenced by the fact that the neuronal ci rcuitry associated with particular symptom dimensions may differ in men and women.