Clinical correlates of anhedonia and perceptual aberration in first-episode patients with schizophrenia and affective disorder.

Abstract

We wished to determine the specificity of smooth-pursuit eye tracking dysfunction to schizophrenia and the prevalences of dysfunction among functionally psychotic and normal individuals. Therefore, we investigated pursuit tracking in a large sample of psychotic patients, normal subjects, and first-degree relatives (N = 482). Patients were recruited as part of an epidemiological study of first-episode psychosis that used a broadly based referral network to identify all cases in a major metropolitan area over a 2 1/2-year period. Patients received diagnoses of schizophrenia, schizophreniform disorder, psychotic mood disorder, and paranoid or other psychotic disorder based on the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 1980). The distribution of tracking performance was bimodal for the schizophrenic patients and their relatives, perhaps reflecting major gene action. Moreover, poor tracking ran in families. Pursuit tracking dysfunction was relatively specific to schizophrenic patients and their relatives and occurred infrequently in other psychotic patients and normal subjects.

The validity of Psychosis Proneness Scales as vulnerability indicators in recent-onset schizophrenia patients

“…In addition, PhysAnh demonstrated minimal covariation with clinical symptoms and remained persistently elevated even in a subsample of patients who achieved a fully remitted state, consistent with prior reports that PhysAnh is relatively independent of symptom state (Blanchard et al 1994;Katsanis et al 1992). Thus, anhedonia appears to be insensitive to clinical state fluctuations and present throughout the course of illness, similar to certain neurocognitive and neurophysiological deficits that have been identified as candidate endophenotypes for genetic studies of vulnerability to schizophrenia (Gur et al 2007).…”

“…That is, patients demonstrated abnormalities during symptomatic and asymptomatic states, but these were more deviant during symptomatic periods and significantly covaried with general psychotic, mood, and hostility symptoms across assessments (also see (Katsanis et al 1992). The key difference between stable and mediating vulnerability indicators is that the latter are believed to be more proximal in the chain of causal events that lead to symptom exacerbations than are stable vulnerability indicators.…”

Prediction of personality disorder traits by psychosis proneness scales in a German sample of young adults

“…Not surprisingly the Perceptual Aberration and Magical Ideation scales correlated significantly with almost all self-rated personality disorder dimensions when the questionnaires were filled out at the same point in time but the pattern of correlation changed when assessed with a time lag. Other researchers also discuss the impact of the presence of psychopathological symptoms and state variables on observed associations when the data is gathered simultaneously (Bailey et al, 1993;Katsanis, Iacono, Beiser, & Lacey, 1992;Merritt & Balogh, 1986). Therefore our conclusion is that a time-lagged assessment of such variables in a prospective study is needed.…”

Association of Physical and Social Anhedonia with Depression in the Acute Phase of Schizophrenia

“…On the other hand, anhedonia measured by self-report measures (like the PAS and the SAS) seems to co-vary with clinical states in patients with depression, but reflects a trait in schizophrenia patients [35][36][37][38][39][40][41] . Anhedonia in schizophrenia, assessed by the PAS and SAS, has not been found to relate to clinical ratings of depression [20,35,[36][37][38] . Nonetheless, up to now in those studies, no scale originally designed to diagnose and evaluate depression in schizophrenia has been used.…”