Psychiatry and Psychology Commons^™

Data-Driven Neuroanatomical Subtypes In Various Stages Of Schizophrenia: Linking Cortical Thickness, Glutamate, And Language Functioning, Liangbing Liang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The considerable variation in the spatial distribution of cortical thickness changes has been used to parse heterogeneity in schizophrenia. We aimed to recover a ‘cortical impoverishment’ subgroup with widespread cortical thinning. We applied hierarchical cluster analysis to cortical thickness data of three datasets in different stages of psychosis and studied the cognitive, functional, neurochemical, language and symptom profiles of the observed subgroups. Our consensus-based clustering procedure consistently produced a subgroup characterized by significantly lower cortical thickness. This ‘cortical impoverishment’ subgroup was associated with a higher symptom burden in a clinically stable sample and higher glutamate levels with language impairments in …

A Life Lived With Schizophrenia: When Mother’S Love Is Kept In The Dark Exploring Maternal Communication And Attachment Organization In Families With Schizophrenia, Myrsini Stefanidou Marini

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, research into the transgenerational transmission of attachment styles has shown that a mother’sattachment style often predicts the attachment style of her infant. Fearsome parental behavior has been found to predict disorganized attachment in infants, which is further associated with a range of mental health disturbances in adolescence. Furthermore, regular patterns of disturbed communication between mother and child have also been found to lead to ‘schizophrenic’ thinking and behavior in the child’s life. While acknowledging that genetic and other biological factors contribute to the emergence of schizophrenia, this study focused on disorganized attachment and disturbed communication between mother …

A Meta-Analytic Review Of Cognitive Functioning In Negative And Positive Symptoms Of Schizophrenia, Tiffany Forsythe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to conduct two meta-analytic reviews examining cognitive functioning and schizophrenia. The first review examined the literature comparing the cognitive functioning of schizophrenic patients to healthy controls. A second review examined the cognitive functioning within schizophrenic patients, examining the differences between individuals with primarily positive symptomatology and those with primarily negative symptomatology. The first meta-analysis included 19 studies which assessed 861 schizophrenic patients and 858 healthy volunteers overall. The second meta-analysis included 10 studies comparing the cognitive functioning of 1,263 schizophrenics across positive and negative symptoms. Results of the first review indicated that healthy controls …

The Effects Of Two Novel Anti-Inflammatory Compounds On Prepulse Inhibition And Neural Microglia Cell Activation In A Rodent Model Of Schizophrenia, Heath W. Shelton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent studies have shown elevated neuroinflammation in a large subset of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia. A pro-inflammatory cytokine, tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNFα), has been directly linked to this neuroinflammation. This study examined the effects of two TNFα modulators (PD2024 and PD340) produced by our collaborators at P2D Bioscience, Inc., to alleviate auditory sensorimotor gating deficits and reduce microglial cell activation present in the polyinosinic:polycytidylic (Poly I:C) rodent model of schizophrenia. Auditory sensorimotor gating was assessed using prepulse inhibition and microglial activation was examined and quantified using immunohistochemistry and confocal microscopy, respectively. Both PD2024 and PD340 alleviated auditory sensorimotor gating deficits …

Neurologists Look At Causes Of Baffling Brain Condition, Maggie Freleng

Capstones

It can be hard getting help for someone with mental illness, but almost impossible when that person doesn't think they are sick. At at least half of people with schizophrenia, for example, insist that the voices they hear are real. People who do not know they are ill often refuse therapy and medication -- and their symptoms can spiral out of control. Doctors call this lack of awareness anosognosia. Neurologists are trying to discover what causes this baffling condition--and how to treat it.

Affect Identification And Interpersonal Skills: An In-Depth Evaluation Of Social Cognition In Schizophrenia, Griffin Pollock Sutton

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The presence of deficits in various sub-domains of social cognition has been investigated to a degree in individuals with schizophrenia. Some of the most commonly researched and documented deficits have included impairments in the identification of affect portrayed in faces. Research has indicated that the performance of individuals with schizophrenia on such tasks is generally impaired as compared to normal controls. However, some have questioned the generalizability of such findings to real-world situations, as day-to-day interactions generally necessitate a constant, fluid assessment of the thoughts and feelings of others and are rarely, if ever, limited to still images of others. …

Using Negative Feedback To Guide Behavior: Impairments On The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test Relates To Psychosis, Sally Barney

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

There is increasing controversy regarding the distinction between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as separate diagnostic categories because these disorders share many features in common. These and other findings suggest that bipolar disorder and schizophrenia may be better conceptualized along a continuum or within more homogeneous subsets of affective, psychotic, and mixed symptomatology.

Dopamine dysregulation has been found in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, particularly those that experience psychosis during the acute phases of their bipolar illness. Dopamine has been found to play a role in reward and reward learning. Recently, research has found that individuals with schizophrenia experience deficits in reward …

Public Opinions Of Schizophrenia, Amy Guiomard

Honors Theses

Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder characterized by disturbances in thought, behavior, and communication that last longer than 6 months (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). The symptoms of schizophrenia are often so severe that the individual is unable to function normally in society. The resulting erratic behavior, combined with misinformation about the disorder in general, leads to the negative stigma now associated with the disorder. The research presented here evaluates public stigmatization towards schizophrenics; it also explores the similarities between behavior due to racial stereotyping and behavior based on stigmatization of schizophrenics.