Verbal memory impairments in schizophrenia associated with cortical thinning
S. Guimond, M.M. Chakravarty, L. Bergeron-Gagnon, R. Patel, M. Lepage
Background Our memory is a cognitive function that we most call upon. We are constantly using our memory to store numerous amounts of information, which helps us to develop our own bank of common knowledge, which we can later call upon. We tend to consider memory as a whole, when in fact the type of information we memorize and recall, actually engages our brain in different ways. Although, when we develop a cognitive dysfunction, our brain starts to fog and we begin to lose those intellectual functions and we can develop a number of different neurocognitive disorders. One major neurocognitive disorder …show more content…
Previous studies have shown schizophrenia to be associated with cortical abnormalities but nothing relating it to VM impairment. This study helps to dive deeper into the topic of verbal memory and explain how the cortical thickness/volume of various regions in verbal memory can be connected to schizophrenia. The main goal was to decide whether schizophrenia patients with severe VM impairments also have greater cortical thinning in major brain regions associated with cognitive function. In order to test there hypothesis they examined 27 schizophrenia patients with moderate to severe VM impairments and compared them to 23 patients with mild VM impairments and 23 healthy patients were used as …show more content…
To start the experiment they recruited fifty schizophrenia patients at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute in Montreal, QC, Canada, and matched them with 23 healthy control patients based on age, sex, handedness, and level of education. All the participants were evaluated with the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (Oldfield, 1971), the Hollingshead two-factor index social position (Hollinshead, 1965), and either the SCID-I to depict between the patients with a disorder and the healthy controls. A series of other tests like they SANS and SAPS were performed to confirm which participants were healthy and which had schizophrenia. As part of the neurocognitive assessment, all participants performed the VM International Shopping List Task (ISLT), where participants underwent 3 trials to learn a list of 16 words, which were later recalled to test their memory (Pietrzak et al., 2009). These assessments helped to create a cognitive profile for the two subgroups of patients.
In order for the researchers to verify that both subgroups were matched, statistical analysis of demographics, clinical and neuropsychological information were gathered from each of the participants. To make sure that they examined the differences in the
S. Guimond, M.M. Chakravarty, L. Bergeron-Gagnon, R. Patel, M. Lepage
Background Our memory is a cognitive function that we most call upon. We are constantly using our memory to store numerous amounts of information, which helps us to develop our own bank of common knowledge, which we can later call upon. We tend to consider memory as a whole, when in fact the type of information we memorize and recall, actually engages our brain in different ways. Although, when we develop a cognitive dysfunction, our brain starts to fog and we begin to lose those intellectual functions and we can develop a number of different neurocognitive disorders. One major neurocognitive disorder …show more content…
Previous studies have shown schizophrenia to be associated with cortical abnormalities but nothing relating it to VM impairment. This study helps to dive deeper into the topic of verbal memory and explain how the cortical thickness/volume of various regions in verbal memory can be connected to schizophrenia. The main goal was to decide whether schizophrenia patients with severe VM impairments also have greater cortical thinning in major brain regions associated with cognitive function. In order to test there hypothesis they examined 27 schizophrenia patients with moderate to severe VM impairments and compared them to 23 patients with mild VM impairments and 23 healthy patients were used as …show more content…
To start the experiment they recruited fifty schizophrenia patients at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute in Montreal, QC, Canada, and matched them with 23 healthy control patients based on age, sex, handedness, and level of education. All the participants were evaluated with the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (Oldfield, 1971), the Hollingshead two-factor index social position (Hollinshead, 1965), and either the SCID-I to depict between the patients with a disorder and the healthy controls. A series of other tests like they SANS and SAPS were performed to confirm which participants were healthy and which had schizophrenia. As part of the neurocognitive assessment, all participants performed the VM International Shopping List Task (ISLT), where participants underwent 3 trials to learn a list of 16 words, which were later recalled to test their memory (Pietrzak et al., 2009). These assessments helped to create a cognitive profile for the two subgroups of patients.
In order for the researchers to verify that both subgroups were matched, statistical analysis of demographics, clinical and neuropsychological information were gathered from each of the participants. To make sure that they examined the differences in the