Centre de Recherche Université Laval Robert-Giffard, F-4500, Québec, Québec, Canada.
Psychiatry Res. 2010 Jan 30;175(1-2):15-21. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2009.01.007. Epub 2009 Nov 27.
Episodic memory deficits are present in patients with schizophrenia (SZ) and their unaffected relatives and could be considered as a cognitive indicator of genetic vulnerability to SZ. The present study, involving patients with SZ as well as their parents, used experimental tasks specifically designed to disentangle the contribution of familiarity and recollection processes to episodic memory. The performance of patients with SZ (n=26) and their unaffected parents (n=35) was compared with that of healthy control groups matched on socio-demographic variables (controls of patients, n=26; controls of parents, n=35) on two memory tasks assessing recollection and familiarity. The first task was designed to investigate item recognition and memory for item-spatial context associations whereas the second targeted item-item associations. The results revealed an overall episodic memory deficit in patients with SZ, encompassing both familiarity and recollection, while unaffected parents showed a dysfunction restricted to the recollection process. Our study highlights differences and similarities in the source of the episodic memory deficit found in patients with SZ and their unaffected parents, and it suggests that recollection could act as a cognitive endophenotype of SZ. The results also suggest that use of experimental tasks represents a promising method in the search of cognitive endophenotypes in SZ.
情景记忆缺陷存在于精神分裂症患者及其未受影响的亲属中，可被视为遗传易感性精神分裂症的认知指标。本研究涉及精神分裂症患者及其父母，使用专门设计的实验任务来区分情景记忆中熟悉度和回忆过程的贡献。将患者（n=26）和未受影响的父母（n=35）的表现与根据社会人口统计学变量匹配的健康对照组（患者对照组，n=26；父母对照组，n=35）进行比较，在两项记忆任务上评估回忆和熟悉度。第一项任务旨在调查项目识别和项目-空间上下文关联的记忆，而第二项任务则针对项目-项目关联。结果显示，精神分裂症患者存在整体情景记忆缺陷，包括熟悉度和回忆，而未受影响的父母则表现出仅在回忆过程中出现的功能障碍。我们的研究强调了在患者和未受影响的父母中发现的情景记忆缺陷的来源的差异和相似之处，并表明回忆可以作为精神分裂症的认知内表型。结果还表明，使用实验任务代表了一种寻找精神分裂症认知内表型的有前途的方法。
