Global cognitive decline in schizophrenia with remission of symptoms?

The relation of symptoms to cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia is still controversial. This study was aimed (i) at verifying ifa homogeneous sampl e of 10 young treated outpatients in remission from psychotic symptoms disp lays a characteristic pattern of cognitive dysfunction and (ii) at testing the issue of a general cognitive impairment. The neuropsychological perform ance of the patients was confronted with a large control group by means of Equivalent Scores, a normative method widely used in Italy, which allows di rect, reliable comparison between tests and between patients. We found that our patients, as a group, were affected by a basic activation deficit in a ttention and by a semantic impairment. These deficits in symptom-free patie nts could indicate that their brains are in some ways working differently f rom those of normal controls and that this pattern is not necessarily linke d to psychotic symptoms: their neuropsychological impairment might reflect a basic difference in the way of processing information that is always pres ent and is independent of general intellectual decay. (C) 2001 Academic Pre ss.