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Grimes KM, Foussias G, Remington G, Kalahani-Bargis K, Zakzanis KK. Stability of Verbal Fluency in Outpatients with Schizophrenia. Psychiatry Res 2021; 295:113528. [PMID: 33189369 DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2020.113528] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/09/2019] [Accepted: 10/20/2020] [Indexed: 12/21/2022]
Abstract
While it is well established that individuals with schizophrenia exhibit a wide range of neurocognitive deficits, there is significant heterogeneity in this regard. Impairments in verbal fluency appear to present consistently across most individuals with the illness. The present study examined the stability of verbal fluency abilities in chronic schizophrenia longitudinally. It was hypothesized that semantic but not phonemic verbal fluency performance would be stable over one year. Data was extracted from a larger study that followed 53 outpatients (70% male; mean age = 39.2 years) diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. At each testing interval (baseline, 6, and 12 months), the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia was administered, which included phonemic (i.e., F, S) and semantic (i.e., animals) verbal fluency tasks. No significant differences were found across time points for semantic and phonemic verbal fluency with respect to mean number of words generated, clustering, and switching. The findings provide evidence of stability in semantic and phonemic verbal fluency abilities in chronic schizophrenia. Moving forward, it would be valuable to examine verbal fluency performance longitudinally across multiple stages of illness (i.e., clinically high-risk to chronic schizophrenia).
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Affiliation(s)
- Kyrsten M Grimes
- University of Toronto Scarborough, 1265 Military Trail, Scarborough Ontario.
| | - George Foussias
- Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 250 College Street, Toronto Ontario
| | - Gary Remington
- Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 250 College Street, Toronto Ontario
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Brébion G, Stephan-Otto C, Huerta-Ramos E, Usall J, Perez del Olmo M, Contel M, Haro J, Ochoa S. Decreased processing speed might account for working memory span deficit in schizophrenia, and might mediate the associations between working memory span and clinical symptoms. Eur Psychiatry 2020; 29:473-8. [DOI: 10.1016/j.eurpsy.2014.02.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/18/2013] [Revised: 02/10/2014] [Accepted: 02/21/2014] [Indexed: 10/25/2022] Open
Abstract
AbstractObjectiveVerbal working memory span is decreased in patients with schizophrenia, and this might contribute to impairment in higher cognitive functions as well as to the formation of certain clinical symptoms. Processing speed has been identified as a crucial factor in cognitive efficiency in this population. We tested the hypothesis that decreased processing speed underlies the verbal working memory deficit in patients and mediates the associations between working memory span and clinical symptoms.MethodForty-nine schizophrenia inpatients recruited from units for chronic and acute patients, and forty-five healthy participants, were involved in the study. Verbal working memory span was assessed by means of the letter-number span. The Digit Copy test was used to assess motor speed, and the Digit Symbol Substitution Test to assess cognitive speed.ResultsThe working memory span was significantly impaired in patients (F(1,90) = 4.6, P < 0.05). However, the group difference was eliminated when either the motor or the cognitive speed measure was controlled (F(1,89) = 0.03, P = 0.86, and F(1,89) = 0.03, P = 0.88). In the patient group, working memory span was significantly correlated with negative symptoms (r = –0.52, P < 0.0001) and thought disorganisation (r = –0.34, P < 0.025) scores. Regression analyses showed that the association with negative symptoms was no longer significant when the motor speed measure was controlled (β = –0.12, P = 0.20), while the association with thought disorganisation was no longer significant when the cognitive speed measure was controlled (β = –0.10, P = 0.26).ConclusionsDecrement in motor and cognitive speed plays a significant role in both the verbal working memory impairment observed in patients and the associations between verbal working memory impairment and clinical symptoms.
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Robay A, Abbasi S, Akil A, El-Bardisi H, Arafa M, Crystal RG, Fakhro KA. A systematic review on the genetics of male infertility in the era of next-generation sequencing. Arab J Urol 2018; 16:53-64. [PMID: 29713536 PMCID: PMC5922186 DOI: 10.1016/j.aju.2017.12.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 29] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/01/2017] [Revised: 11/30/2017] [Accepted: 12/11/2017] [Indexed: 02/04/2023] Open
Abstract
OBJECTIVES To identify the role of next-generation sequencing (NGS) in male infertility, as advances in NGS technologies have contributed to the identification of novel genes responsible for a wide variety of human conditions and recently has been applied to male infertility, allowing new genetic factors to be discovered. MATERIALS AND METHODS PubMed was searched for combinations of the following terms: 'exome', 'genome', 'panel', 'sequencing', 'whole-exome sequencing', 'whole-genome sequencing', 'next-generation sequencing', 'azoospermia', 'oligospermia', 'asthenospermia', 'teratospermia', 'spermatogenesis', and 'male infertility', to identify studies in which NGS technologies were used to discover variants causing male infertility. RESULTS Altogether, 23 studies were found in which the primary mode of variant discovery was an NGS-based technology. These studies were mostly focused on patients with quantitative sperm abnormalities (non-obstructive azoospermia and oligospermia), followed by morphological and motility defects. Combined, these studies uncover variants in 28 genes causing male infertility discovered by NGS methods. CONCLUSIONS Male infertility is a condition that is genetically heterogeneous, and therefore remarkably amenable to study by NGS. Although some headway has been made, given the high incidence of this condition despite its detrimental effect on reproductive fitness, there is significant potential for further discoveries.
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Affiliation(s)
- Amal Robay
- Department of Genetic Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, Qatar
| | - Saleha Abbasi
- Human Genetics Department, Sidra Medical and Research Center, Qatar
| | - Ammira Akil
- Human Genetics Department, Sidra Medical and Research Center, Qatar
| | | | - Mohamed Arafa
- Department of Urology, Hamada Medical Corporation, Doha, Qatar
- Department of Andrology, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt
| | - Ronald G. Crystal
- Department of Genetic Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA
| | - Khalid A. Fakhro
- Department of Genetic Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, Qatar
- Human Genetics Department, Sidra Medical and Research Center, Qatar
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Grimes KM, Zanjani A, Zakzanis KK. Memory impairment and the mediating role of task difficulty in patients with schizophrenia. Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 2017; 71:600-611. [PMID: 28294468 DOI: 10.1111/pcn.12520] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/13/2016] [Revised: 01/08/2017] [Accepted: 03/07/2017] [Indexed: 02/04/2023]
Abstract
Using meta-analytic methods, we sought to synthesize the research literature on memory impairment in schizophrenia. Additionally, we compared performances across memory measures to determine if task difficulty (e.g., effortful encoding and retrieval vs non-effortful encoding and retrieval) could account for variance across studies. Our primary measures of interest included the California Verbal Learning Test, Wechsler Memory Scale, Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, Hopkins Verbal Learning Test, Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test, and the Benton Visual Retention Test. We searched for all studies that met inclusion criteria using PubMed, PsycINFO, Scholars Portal Search, and Google Scholar. Studies were included if: (i) they were published after 1980; (ii) healthy controls were compared to patients with schizophrenia; (iii) at least one of the noted measures of interest was employed in the primary study; and (iv) the primary study included data that could be transformed to point estimate effect sizes (i.e., Cohen's d). Cohen's d was calculated between patients and healthy controls, along with overall 95% confidence intervals. A two-tailed independent samples t-test was conducted to assess if performance differed on various paired subtests of the same domain. Large effect sizes were found for all memory tests. No significant differences were found between subtests. In conclusion, patients with schizophrenia experience significant verbal and visual memory impairments, which are not explained by task difficulty. Patients were unable to learn or retrieve more reliably despite repetition and cuing strategies, suggesting that memory impairment in the illness is not a function of task difficulty.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kyrsten M Grimes
- Department of Psychological Clinical Science, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Canada
| | - Anosha Zanjani
- Graduate School of Architecture, Columbia University, New York, USA
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Noort MVD, Struys E, Perriard B, Staudte H, Yeo S, Lim S, Bosch P. Schizophrenia and depression: The relation between sleep quality and working memory. Asian J Psychiatr 2016; 24:73-78. [PMID: 27931914 DOI: 10.1016/j.ajp.2016.08.023] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/24/2015] [Revised: 08/28/2016] [Accepted: 08/30/2016] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Sleep is known to be markedly disturbed in patients with depression, but in patients with schizophrenia these problems are underestimated. This research aimed to determine if a relationship existed between sleep problems in patients with schizophrenia and with depression and their reduced working memory (WM) performance. Thirty outpatients with schizophrenia, 30 outpatients with depression, and 30 healthy control participants were enrolled in this study. All participants completed a sleep questionnaire (i.e., Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI)), two simple WM tasks tapping only its storage component (i.e., digit span forward and backward task), and two complex WM tasks tapping both its storage and processing components (i.e., letter-number sequencing and reading span task). The results showed that neither psychiatric group differed from the healthy controls on simple WM tasks. Patients with schizophrenia did not differ from those with depression in the performance of simple or complex WM tasks. However, patients with schizophrenia, and, to a lesser degree, patients with depression performed significantly worse than the healthy control participants on complex WM tasks, which was visible in lower WM scores for patients with depression and in slower information processing, as well, for patients with schizophrenia. Finally, a significant negative relationship was found between the PSQI score and the reading span task scores; thus, participants with worse performance tended to report more sleep problems. To conclude, sleep needs to receive more priority when treating patients with depression and especially patients with schizophrenia because better sleep improves (working) memory performance and daily functioning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maurits van den Noort
- Research Group of Pain and Neuroscience, Kyung Hee University, #47 Gyeonghuidae-Gil, Dongdaemun-Gu, Seoul 130-701, Republic of Korea; Brussels Institute for Applied Linguistics, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium.
| | - Esli Struys
- Center of Linguistics, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium.
| | - Benoît Perriard
- Department of Psychology, Université de Fribourg, Rue de Faucigny 2, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland.
| | - Heike Staudte
- Psychiatric Research Institute, LVR-Klinik Bedburg-Hau, Nassauerallee 93-97, 47533 Kleve, Germany.
| | - Sujung Yeo
- Department of Acupuncture & Meridian of Oriental Medicine, Sang Ji University, 83 Sangjidae-gil, Wonju 26339, Republic of Korea.
| | - Sabina Lim
- Research Group of Pain and Neuroscience, Kyung Hee University, #47 Gyeonghuidae-Gil, Dongdaemun-Gu, Seoul 130-701, Republic of Korea.
| | - Peggy Bosch
- Research Group of Pain and Neuroscience, Kyung Hee University, #47 Gyeonghuidae-Gil, Dongdaemun-Gu, Seoul 130-701, Republic of Korea; Psychiatric Research Institute, LVR-Klinik Bedburg-Hau, Nassauerallee 93-97, 47533 Kleve, Germany; Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Centre for Cognition, Radboud University Nijmegen, Montessorilaan 3, 6525 HR Nijmegen, The Netherlands, The Netherlands.
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Brébion G, Villalta-Gil V, Autonell J, Cervilla J, Dolz M, Foix A, Haro JM, Usall J, Vilaplana M, Ochoa S. Cognitive correlates of verbal memory and verbal fluency in schizophrenia, and differential effects of various clinical symptoms between male and female patients. Schizophr Res 2013; 147:81-85. [PMID: 23578747 DOI: 10.1016/j.schres.2013.03.014] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/02/2012] [Revised: 02/27/2013] [Accepted: 03/15/2013] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Impairment of higher cognitive functions in patients with schizophrenia might stem from perturbation of more basic functions, such as processing speed. Various clinical symptoms might affect cognitive efficiency as well. Notably, previous research has revealed the role of affective symptoms on memory performance in this population, and suggested sex-specific effects. METHOD We conducted a post-hoc analysis of an extensive neuropsychological study of 88 patients with schizophrenia. Regression analyses were conducted on verbal memory and verbal fluency data to investigate the contribution of semantic organisation and processing speed to performance. The role of negative and affective symptoms and of attention disorders in verbal memory and verbal fluency was investigated separately in male and female patients. RESULTS Semantic clustering contributed to verbal recall, and a measure of reading speed contributed to verbal recall as well as to phonological and semantic fluency. Negative symptoms affected verbal recall and verbal fluency in the male patients, whereas attention disorders affected these abilities in the female patients. Furthermore, depression affected verbal recall in women, whereas anxiety affected it in men. CONCLUSIONS These results confirm the association of processing speed with cognitive efficiency in patients with schizophrenia. They also confirm the previously observed sex-specific associations of depression and anxiety with memory performance in these patients, and suggest that negative symptoms and attention disorders likewise are related to cognitive efficiency differently in men and women.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gildas Brébion
- Unitat de Recerca, Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, Barcelona, Spain; CIBERSAM, Spain.
| | - Victoria Villalta-Gil
- Fundació Sant Joan de Déu, Esplugues de Llobregat, and Departament de Psiquiatria i Medicina Legal, Facultat de Medicina, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain; CIBERSAM, Spain
| | - Jaume Autonell
- Unitat de Recerca, Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, Barcelona, Spain; Unitat de Recerca, Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Jorge Cervilla
- Unidad de Salud Mental, Hospital Universitario San Cecilio, Granada, Spain; CIBERSAM, Spain
| | - Montserrat Dolz
- Hospital Materno Infantil, Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, Barcelona, Spain; CIBERSAM, Spain
| | - Alexandrina Foix
- Unitat de Recerca, Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, Barcelona, Spain; CIBERSAM, Spain
| | - Josep Maria Haro
- Unitat de Recerca, Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, Barcelona, Spain; CIBERSAM, Spain
| | - Judith Usall
- Unitat de Recerca, Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, Barcelona, Spain; CIBERSAM, Spain
| | - Miriam Vilaplana
- Unitat de Recerca, Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, Barcelona, Spain; CIBERSAM, Spain
| | - Susana Ochoa
- Unitat de Recerca, Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, Barcelona, Spain; CIBERSAM, Spain
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