Department of Psychology, University of Bonn, Germany.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Munich, Germany.
J Neuropsychol. 2018 Sep;12(3):484-510. doi: 10.1111/jnp.12126. Epub 2017 May 8.
The ability to inhibit inappropriate responses and suppress irrelevant information is a core feature of executive control. In this study, we provide a detailed analysis of prepotent response inhibition and interference in patients with schizophrenia. To further test the role of genetic factors and subclinical schizophrenia-like traits, we additionally studied clinically unaffected, first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients and assessed dimensions of schizotypy in both relatives and healthy controls. Inhibition and interference control were assessed using a battery comprising the antisaccade, Stroop, stop signal, go/no-go, flanker, and Simon tasks. Schizophrenia patients differed from both relatives and controls in making more errors on the antisaccade task and having longer response times on the Stroop task, especially the incongruent condition. Patients also had general, that is, condition independent, increases in reaction times on the go/no-go and flanker tasks and made more errors on the flanker and Simon tasks, suggesting general performance impairments independent of inhibitory demand. Relatives were characterized by hypometric antisaccade amplitude gain despite normal prosaccades, suggesting a selective deficit in non-standard sensorimotor transformations. Schizotypy was correlated with inhibitory performance across a number of tasks in both relatives and controls. Generally, these effects were independent of verbal intelligence levels. Overall, the findings point to rather selective impairments of inhibitory control in the schizophrenia spectrum and confirm a previously observed deficit in antisaccade spatial accuracy as an endophenotype of schizophrenia.
抑制不当反应和抑制无关信息的能力是执行控制的核心特征。在这项研究中，我们对精神分裂症患者的优势反应抑制和干扰进行了详细分析。为了进一步测试遗传因素和亚临床精神分裂样特征的作用，我们还研究了未受临床影响的精神分裂症患者的一级亲属，并在亲属和健康对照组中评估了精神分裂症样特质的维度。使用包含反扫视、Stroop、停止信号、Go/No-Go、Flanker 和 Simon 任务的电池来评估抑制和干扰控制。精神分裂症患者在反扫视任务上的错误率高于亲属和对照组，在 Stroop 任务上的反应时间更长，尤其是在不一致的条件下。患者在 Go/No-Go 和 Flanker 任务上的反应时间普遍增加，即与抑制需求无关，并且在 Flanker 和 Simon 任务上的错误更多，这表明存在与抑制需求无关的一般表现缺陷。尽管存在正常的注视性眼球运动，但亲属的反扫视振幅增益较低，这表明非标准感觉运动转换存在选择性缺陷。精神分裂症样特质与亲属和对照组的多项任务中的抑制性能相关。总的来说，这些效应独立于言语智力水平。总体而言，这些发现表明精神分裂症谱系中存在抑制控制的选择性损伤，并证实了先前观察到的反扫视空间准确性缺陷作为精神分裂症的内表型。
