INSERM, Physiopathologie des Maladies Psychiatriques, U894-7; Centre de Psychiatrie et Neurosciences Paris, France.
Behav Brain Funct. 2011 Jul 5;7:24. doi: 10.1186/1744-9081-7-24.
Attention is impaired in schizophrenia. Early attention components include orienting and alerting, as well as executive control networks. Previous studies have shown mainly executive control deficits, while few of them found orienting and alerting abnormalities. Here we explore the different attentive networks, their modulation and interactions in patients with schizophrenia.
Twenty-one schizophrenic patients (DSMIV), compared to 21 controls, performed a modified version of the Attention Network Task, in which an orienting paradigm (with valid, invalid and no cues) was combined with a flanker task (congruent/incongruent) and an alerting signal (tone/no tone), to assess orienting, executive control and alerting networks independently.
Patients showed an abnormal alerting effect and slower overall reaction time compared to controls. Moreover, there was an interaction between orienting and alerting: patients are helped more than controls by the alerting signal in a valid orientation to solve the incongruent condition.
These results suggest that patients with schizophrenia have altered alerting abilities. However, the orienting and alerting cues interact to improve their attention performance in the resolution of conflict, creating possibilities for cognitive remediation strategies.
精神分裂症患者的注意力受损。早期注意力成分包括定向和警觉，以及执行控制网络。先前的研究主要显示了执行控制缺陷，而很少有研究发现定向和警觉异常。在这里，我们探讨了精神分裂症患者不同的注意力网络及其调节和相互作用。
21 名精神分裂症患者（DSMIV）与 21 名对照组比较，进行了改良的注意网络任务，其中定向范式（有效、无效和无提示）与侧翼任务（一致/不一致）和警觉信号（音/无音）相结合，以独立评估定向、执行控制和警觉网络。
与对照组相比，患者的警觉效应异常，整体反应时间较慢。此外，定向和警觉之间存在相互作用：在有效定向的情况下，患者比对照组更能从警觉信号中受益，从而解决不一致的情况。
这些结果表明，精神分裂症患者的警觉能力发生了改变。然而，定向和警觉提示相互作用，以提高他们在解决冲突时的注意力表现，为认知矫正策略创造了可能性。
