Sustained Attention in Children at Risk for Schizophrenia

Effects of Atypical Neuroleptics on Sustained Attention Deficits in Schizophrenia A Trial of Risperidone Versus Haloperidol

“…The deficits are relatively specific for schizophrenia as compared to other psychiatric disorders (Cornblatt et al 1989;Mussgay and Hertwig 1990). Similar deficits on CPT performance have also been demonstrated in populations at increased risk for schizophrenia, such as those with schizotypal personality disorders , relatives of schizophrenic patients (Chen et al 1998b;Mirsky et al 1995;Rutschmann et al 1977), and nonclinical subjects with high schizotypy scores (Chen et al 1998a;Lenzenweger et al 1991). All these characteristics indicate that CPT performance deficits are potential endophenotypic indicators (i.e., behavioral characteristics that mark the presence of genotypic risk) of schizophrenia (Cornblatt and Keilp 1994).…”

Correlational Patterns of Cerebral Glucose Metabolism in Never-Medicated Schizophrenics

“…Further, Nuechterlein [36] demonstrated the d' index of signal/noise discrimination from five versions of the CPT fell on a common rotated principal component and that the d' factor score was significantly impaired, rel ative to representative normal children, among children of schizophrenic mothers but' not among children of mothers with nonpsychotic psychiatric disorders falling outside the schizophrenia spectrum. Impaired CPT per formance in subjects at heightened risk for schizophrenia has also been reported by Rutschmann et al [37], Erlenmeyer-Kimling and Cornblatt [38], Walker and Shave [30] and Cornblatt et al [31,32], Along with smooth pur suit eye tracking, the CPT is one of the very few measures that has been rigorously demonstrated to show a 'trait' rather than a 'state' relationship to schizophrenia.…”

“…In our PET studies of over 100 patients, we have found general patterns of regional metabolic activity that char acterize patients with schizophrenia regardless of whether patients are tested in the resting state [56], while receiving electric shocks [51], or while performing the CPT [45], Similarly diverse experimental conditions were used from the studies of Ingver and Franzen [1] to those of Wein berger et al [57; see also reviews in 3,29], The use of the CPT. a task with demonstrated salience to the genetic vul nerability to develop schizophrenia [27,30,32,37,38], serves to heighten the differences between normal and schizophrenic groups. Flowever.…”

Impaired attention as an endophenotype for molecular genetic studies of schizophrenia

“…The major indices include: percent corrects, percent false alarms (responses to "catch" trials), percent random errors (responses to the randomly organized fillers), reaction times (for all responses), number of times off task (times finger is off the response key for more than one trial), and signal detection indices, d', and natural log ␤. The signal detection index, d', is most typically used to measure attentional capacity across studies using the CPT-IP, with the higher the score as the better the performance [Rutschmann et al, 1977]. …”