It has been demonstrated that motor coordination of interacting people plays a crucial role in the success of social exchanges. Abnormal movements have been reported during interpersonal interactions of patients suffering from schizophrenia and a motor coordination breakdown could explain this social interaction deficit, which is one of the main and earliest features of the illness. Using the dynamical systems framework, the goal of the current study was (i) to investigate whether social motor coordination is impaired in schizophrenia and (ii) to determine the underlying perceptual or cognitive processes that may be affected. We examined intentional and unintentional social motor coordination in participants oscillating hand-held pendulums from the wrist. The control group consisted of twenty healthy participant pairs while the experimental group consisted of twenty participant pairs that included one participant suffering from schizophrenia. The results showed that unintentional social motor coordination was preserved while intentional social motor coordination was impaired. In intentional coordination, the schizophrenia group displayed coordination patterns that had lower stability and in which the patient never led the coordination. A coupled oscillator model suggests that the schizophrenia group coordination pattern was due to a decrease in the amount of available information together with a delay in information transmission. Our study thus identified relational motor signatures of schizophrenia and opens new perspectives for detecting the illness and improving social interactions of patients.

The efficacy and tolerability of Lu AA21004 in the prevention of relapse of major depressive disorder (MDD) in patients in remission after acute treatment was evaluated. Patients (n=639) aged 18-75 years with a primary diagnosis of MDD with a current major depressive episode (MDE) ≥4 weeks' duration, at least one prior MDE and a MADRS total score ≥26 received 12-week, open-label Lu AA21004 at 5 or 10mg/day. Patients in remission (MADRS ≤10) at both weeks 10 and 12 were assigned to double-blind treatment with either placebo or Lu AA21004 (fixed dose from Week 8).Patients (n=396) were treated, after random assignment to placebo (n=192) or Lu AA21004 (n=204). The primary analysis of time to relapse (full-analysis set, Cox proportional hazard model) showed a statistically significant difference in favour of Lu AA21004 versus placebo with a hazard ratio of 2.01 (95% confidence interval: 1.26-3.21; p=0.0035). The proportion of patients who relapsed was 13% in the Lu AA21004 group (n=27) and 26% in the placebo group (n=50). The withdrawal rates due to adverse events were 8% (open-label), and 3% (placebo) and 8% (Lu AA21004) (double-blind). Thus, Lu AA21004 was effective in preventing relapse of MDD and was well tolerated as maintenance treatment.

a b s t r a c tRecent research has established that schizophrenia patients have difficulties envisioning the future. Although mental simulations have a clear adaptive value, little is known about the function of simulating future episodes, particularly emotional events. The aim of this study was to explore the relationships between apathy and future projection in schizophrenia. Twenty-five schizophrenia patients and 25 healthy controls were asked to imagine pleasant and unpleasant episodes that might happen to them in the future. Verbal descriptions were scored for specificity, and participants also completed the Memory Characteristics Questionnaire, which assesses phenomenal characteristics of imagined future events. Apathy was assessed with the Lille Apathy Rating Scale and the apathetic/social withdrawal item of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. Results showed that schizophrenia patients' pleasant and unpleasant imagined future events were less specific and contained fewer phenomenal characteristics (e.g., amount of sensory details) than those of controls. In the schizophrenia group, difficulties imagining future pleasant events, and particularly poor self-referential information for future pleasant events, were specifically associated with apathy, even after controlling for working memory. These results suggest that episodic future thinking impairments, especially for future events of pleasure, may partly underlie the motivational deficits characteristic of schizophrenia.