Cecilie Lemvigh

Cognitive impairments are a core feature of psychosis that are often evident before illness onset and have substantial impact on both clinical and real-world functional outcomes. Therefore, these are an excellent target for stratification and early detection in order to facilitate early intervention. While many studies have aimed to characterise th...

Background While several risk factors for schizophrenia have been identified, their individual impacts are rather small. The relative independent and cumulative impacts of multiple risk factors on disease risk and age of onset warrant further investigation. Study design We conducted a register-based case–control study including all individuals rec...

Patients with schizophrenia exhibit structural and functional dysconnectivity but the relationship to the well-documented cognitive impairments is less clear. This study investigates associations between structural and functional connectivity and executive functions in antipsychotic-naïve patients experiencing schizophrenia. Sixty-four patients wit...

Background Facial expressions are a core aspect of non‐verbal communication. Reduced emotional expressiveness of the face is a common negative symptom of schizophrenia, however, quantifying negative symptoms can be clinically challenging and involves a considerable element of rater subjectivity. We used computer vision to investigate if (i) automat...

Studies across schizophrenia (SZ) and bipolar disorder (BD) indicate common transdiagnostic neurocognitive subgroups. However, existing studies of patients with long-term illness precludes insight into whether impairments result from effects of chronic illness, medication or other factors. This study aimed to investigate whether neurocognitive subg...

Schizophrenia is associated with aberrations in the Default Mode Network (DMN), but the clinical implications remain unclear. We applied data-driven, unsupervised machine learning based on resting-state electroencephalography (rsEEG) functional connectivity within the DMN to cluster antipsychotic-naïve patients with first-episode schizophrenia. The...

Background: Few studies have explored associations between adaptive functioning and cognition in adolescents with early-onset schizophrenia spectrum disorders (EOS). Methods: Adaptive functioning, cognition, positive, negative, and general symptoms were characterized in adolescents with EOS and healthy controls. A modified scale of negative, res...

Background Antipsychotic drugs are primarily efficacious in treating positive symptoms by blocking the dopamine D2 receptor, but they fail to substantially improve negative symptoms and cognitive deficits. The limited efficacy may be attributed to the fact that the pathophysiology of psychosis involves multiple neurotransmitter systems. In patients...

Introduction Aripiprazole is hypothesized to have an effect on negative and cognitive symptoms in schizophrenia. Likewise, amisulpride is one of the only second-generation antipsychotics with which an effect on negative symptoms is reported. In the present study, we compare the effect of aripiprazole and amisulpride in initially antipsychotic-naïve...

We examined social cognition in 32 monozygotic (MZ) and 21 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs concordant or discordant for a schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis and healthy control (HC) twin pairs (29 MZ/20 DZ). All participants were recruited through the Danish registers. Patients showed several deficits in the ability to detect sarcasm. Impairments were also...

Background Research has yielded evidence for genetic and environmental factors influencing the risk of schizophrenia. Numerous environmental factors have been identified; however, the individual effects are small. The additive and interactive effects of multiple risk factors are not well elucidated. Twin pairs discordant for schizophrenia offer a u...

Objective: Evidence shows impaired theory of mind (ToM) in patients with bipolar disorder (BD), yet research examining its cognitive and affective components simultaneously is sparse. Moreover, recognition of socially competitive 'fortune of others' emotions (e.g. envy/gloat) may be related to ToM, but has not been assessed in BD. Finally, if and...

Background Memory performance is heritable and shares partial genetic etiology with schizophrenia. How the genetic overlap between memory and schizophrenia is related to intelligence and brain volumes has not been formally tested using twin modelling. Methods A total of 214 twins were recruited nation-wide by utilization of the Danish registers, i...

Background Many cognitive functions are under strong genetic control and twin studies have demonstrated genetic overlap between some aspects of cognition and schizophrenia. How the genetic relationship between specific cognitive functions and schizophrenia is influenced by IQ is currently unknown. Methods We applied selected tests from the Cambrid...

Numerous studies have demonstrated impaired sensory gating in schizophrenia and this impairment has been proposed as a candidate biomarker for the disorder. The typical age of onset for schizophrenia is early adulthood, however a sizable group of patients present with psychotic symptoms before the age of 18, commonly referred to as early-onset psyc...