Background
Both oculomotor and neuropsychologic deficits have been used to support the hypothesis
that schizophrenia is associated with prefrontal cortex dysfunction, but studies that
have specifically investigated the relationships between these deficits have produced
inconsistent findings.
Methods
We measured both smooth pursuit and antisaccade performance in a large group (n = 109) of patients with first-episode schizophrenia and a group of matched control
subjects (n = 59) and investigated the relationship between performance on these tasks and performance
on a range of executive tasks. We additionally explored the relationship between these
variables and measures of psychopathology at presentation and duration of untreated
psychosis.
Results
Antisaccade errors were significantly correlated with spatial working memory performance.
Smooth pursuit gain did not correlate with any neuropsychologic measure. There were
no reliable correlations between either oculomotor variables and measures of psychopathology
and duration of untreated psychosis.
Conclusions
These findings suggest that in schizophrenia working memory and antisaccade performance
reflect the same abnormal prefrontal substrates and that smooth pursuit is mediated
by a separate neural abnormality.
Key words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: September 13, 2004
Accepted:
July 2,
2004
Received in revised form:
June 11,
2004
Received:
March 11,
2004
Identification
Copyright
© 2004 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
