The relationship between antisaccades, smooth pursuit, and executive dysfunction in first-episode schizophrenia

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. We measured both s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biological psychiatry (1969) 2004-10, Vol.56 (8), p.553-559
Main Authors: Hutton, Samuel B., Huddy, Vyv, Barnes, Thomas R.E., Robbins, Trevor W., Crawford, Trevor J., Kennard, Christopher, Joyce, Eileen M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Adult and adolescent clinical studies
Antisaccade
Biological and medical sciences
Case-Control Studies
executive function
Female
Humans
Male
Medical sciences
Memory, Short-Term - physiology
Neuropsychological Tests - statistics & numerical data
oculomotor
Problem Solving - physiology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychomotor Performance - physiology
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Psychoses
Pursuit, Smooth - physiology
Saccades - physiology
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia - physiopathology
smooth pursuit
Space Perception - physiology
Statistics as Topic
working memory
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Summary: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. 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. 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. 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.
ISSN:0006-3223
1873-2402
DOI:10.1016/j.biopsych.2004.07.002