Barrantes-Vidal Neus, Aguilera Mari, Campanera Sílvia, Fatjó-Vilas Mar, Guitart Marc, Miret Salvador, Valero Sergi, Fañanás Lourdes
Departament de Biologia Animal, Unitat d'Antropologia, Facultat de Biologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Av. Diagonal, 645, 08028-Barcelona, Spain.
Schizophr Res. 2007 Sep;95(1-3):70-5. doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2007.06.020. Epub 2007 Jul 12.
Working memory (WM) has hardly been explored in non-psychotic relatives of schizophrenic patients despite its potential suitability as a neurocognitive endophenotype. Indeed, WM modalities, components and processes have rarely been compared in the same group of relatives. The present study examined neurocognitive performance in healthy siblings of schizophrenic patients, including both spatial and verbal WM modalities and tests tapping maintenance (Spatial Span Backwards and CPT-IP d') and manipulative (Letters and Numbers Sequencing) WM processes.
68 schizophrenia patients, 38 healthy siblings and 63 controls were assessed on IQ, attention, memory, WM, and executive functions. Cluster A symptoms were screened out in siblings and controls.
Siblings had an intermediate performance between that of schizophrenic patients and controls. They performed worse than controls on IQ, LNS, animal naming, backwards spatial span, phonemic fluency, numbers d', and forward spatial span.
Consistent with the WM literature in schizophrenia, both verbal and spatial WM differed significantly between siblings and controls, suggesting that WM deficits are modality independent. Our results failed to support the hypothesis that tests tapping WM manipulative processes heavily loading on DLFPC are quantitatively more impaired in relatives and, therefore, more sensitive to liability for schizophrenia. However, firm conclusions cannot be drawn until more studies assessing both maintenance and manipulative WM processes in relatives are available.
尽管工作记忆（WM）作为一种神经认知内表型具有潜在的适用性，但在精神分裂症患者的非精神病性亲属中却鲜有研究。事实上，很少在同一组亲属中对WM的模式、成分和过程进行比较。本研究考察了精神分裂症患者健康同胞的神经认知表现，包括空间和言语WM模式以及评估维持（倒序空间广度和连续性能测试-抑制（CPT-IP d'））和操作（字母和数字序列）WM过程的测试。
对68名精神分裂症患者、38名健康同胞和63名对照者进行了智商、注意力、记忆、WM和执行功能的评估。在同胞和对照者中筛查出A簇症状。
同胞的表现介于精神分裂症患者和对照者之间。他们在智商、字母和数字序列、动物命名、倒序空间广度、语音流畅性、数字d'和正序空间广度方面的表现比对照者差。
与精神分裂症的WM文献一致，同胞和对照者在言语和空间WM方面均存在显著差异，这表明WM缺陷与模式无关。我们的结果未能支持以下假设，即大量依赖背外侧前额叶皮质（DLFPC）的WM操作过程测试在亲属中受到的损害在数量上更大，因此对精神分裂症的易感性更敏感。然而，在有更多评估亲属维持和操作WM过程的研究之前，无法得出确凿的结论。
