This study was designed to examine the performance of patients with chronic schizophrenia on a series of tasks of constructional abilities. Sixteen male patients and 18 normal controls between the ages of 30 and 60 participated in the study. The three constructional tests - Drawing to command and to copy, stick construction from copying and from a memory, and a three dimensional blocks task - were drawn from the Parietal Lobe Battery (Goodglass & Kaplan, 1972). The hypothesis that patients with schizophrenia would perform significantly more poorly than controls was partially supported in that there were between group differences on most but not all tasks. On the Sticks and Drawing task, there was no difference between groups when the task required direct copying yet patients with schizophrenia performed significantly more poorly than controls on the verbal command condition of the drawing task and the memory condition of the sticks task. On the Blocks test, patients with schizophrenia were significantly less accurate than controls and took significantly longer than controls. Results were discussed in terms of task complexity and brain-behavior relationships. The need to examine the relation of performance on constructional tasks to functional performance and/or outcome in schizophrenia was emphasized.
Visual perception was evaluated with standard tests for 26 hospitalized patients with schizophrenia, 23 hospitalized patients with affective disorders, and 60 control subjects. Both patient groups differed significantly from the control group on low amplitude of accommodation, esophoria or exophoria, vergence duction suppression, and convergence and divergence recovery ductions. Only the affective group showed significantly reduced fusion at near distance, and only the schizophrenic group differed significantly from control subjects on disorganized left apex formation. These findings appear to confirm the presence of visual perceptual disorders that can cause disability in psychiatric patients, with important research and rehabilitation implications.
Of three siblings in a family, one brother and one sister have both tyrosinase-negative oculocutaneous albinism and a psychotic disorder indistinguishable from schizophrenia. The two disorders may associate within families through genetic linkage or a failure of neurotransmitter homoeostasis.
rodents, albinos showed marked behavioral differences from their pigmented counterparts (Henry and Schlesinger 1967). Greiner and Nicolson (1965) proposed a relationship between hypermelanosis and schizophrenia, noting increased melanogenesis in autopsy material from schizophrenics institutionalized in the prephenothiazine era. They hypothesized that a congenital absence of 5hydroxy-o-methyl transferase in the pineal gland of schizophrenics results in the metabolism of serotonin to harmaline alkaloids, which are known hallucinogens, and to the production of melanin instead of melatonin. The Greiner and Nicolson’s (1965) observation of hypermelanosis in schizophrenia implies that albinos, who are characterized by decreased melanin production, are protected from schizophrenia. After a systematic search in local mental hospitals, Arons et al. (1968) found only one albino patient with a diagnosis of “schizophrenic reaction. chronic, undifferentiated’ (DSM-I criteria). Leibowitz et al. (1978) presented a single case of the coexistence of schizophrenia and albinism in refutation of Greiner and Nicolson’s proposal and its implied corollary. Criteria for the psychiatric diagnosis in this case was unclear. Baron (1976) presented a family pedigree study of an association between albinism and schizophreniform psychosis (but not “process” schizophrenia), utilizing Feighner criteria for the psychiatric diagnosis. He postulated that the enhanced retinal photosensitivity associated with albinism led to decreased pineal secretion of melatonin-stimulating hormone and to the decreased production of melatonin. This change in neuroendocrine function may have lowered the normal tonus of the brain y-aminobutyric acid (GABA) system and increased dopaminergic activity in mesolimbic and nigrostriatal pathways, thus increasing vulnerability to the development of psychosis in these patients. We present a patient with oculocutaneous albinism who meets DSM-I criteria for chronic schizophrenia, disorganized type.
Autistic children often display abnormal postures, head tilts, and other spatial management dysfunctions. Methods were introduced to measure spatial orientation in tasks in a group of fourteen autistic children in Montreal, Canada. Ambient lenses were found to improve posture, correct head tilts, and improve ball catching abilities. A model of spatial orientation is described and recommendations are made to incorporate ambient lenses in treatment programs.
Human neuropsychology is the study of brain-behavior relationships based on the analysis of functional disturbances after brain damage. The assessment and analysis of pathological states and processes in the brain on cognition, speech and language, praxis, motivation and affectivity, represent the main topics of neuropsychological research. Patients with psychiatric disorders very often exhibit cognitive impairments which should also be assessed by means of specific neuropsychological diagnostic tools. The advantage of such tools is their validity and reliability which allow accurate qualitative and quantitative analysis and characterization of the various cognitive impairments. Neuropsychological methods of assessment can also be used for follow-up measurements, for example, in studies on the effect of medication. Finally, the outcome of a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment can provide a useful basis for the treatment of cognitive impairments in psychiatric patients using means that have proved successful in brain-damaged patients.
• Disordered smooth-pursuit eye movements occur in a high percentage of schizophrenic patients and their first-degree relatives. A test of the hypothesis that these disorders represent a genetic indicator of schizophrenia was undertaken by testing pursuit eye movements in a sample of monozygotic and dizygotic twins discordant for clinical schizophrenia. Deviant eye tracking is significantly concordant within monozygotic twin pairs, and less so within dizygotic twin pairs discordant for schizophrenia. A genetic interpretation is consistent with these results.
Saccades occurring when tracking a sine-wave target and when fixating a stationary target were studied in the following three groups: schizophrenics, other psychiatric inpatients, and normal controls. The frequency of saccades when tracking and when fixating was significantly greater among schizophrenics than among the two comparison groups. The pattern of occurrence of saccades within cycles of the sine movement was similar in the three groups; the greatest occurrence was at the highest target velocity and the lowest occurrence was at reversal points. The data are interpreted as consistent with the hypothesis of a failure on inhibiting mechanisms.