Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 October 2017
The study tested whether the antisaccade (AS) performance and Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) measures differed between the first-episode and chronic patients to provide the evidence of PFC progressive functional deterioration. Subjects included 15 first-episode and 20 chronic schizophrenic patients (with the duration of illness more than 5 years), and 21 control subjects. The first-episode and chronic patients had significantly elevated error percent (p < .05, effect size 1.10 and p < .001, effect size 1.25), increased AS latencies (p < .01, effect size 1.18 and p < .001, effect size 1.69), and increased latencies variability (p < .01, effect size 1.52 and p < .001, effect size 1.37) compared to controls. Chronic patients had marginally significant increase of the response latency (p = .086, effect size .78) and latency variability (p < .099, effect size .63) compared to first-episode ones. Results of CNV analysis revealed that chronic patients only exhibited robustly declined frontal CNV amplitude at Fz (p < .05, effect size .70), F3 (p < .05, effect size .88), and F4 (p < .05, effect size .71) sites compared to controls. The obtained results might be related to specific changes in prefrontal cortex function over the course of schizophrenia.
Kirenskaya, A. V., Tkachenco, A. A., & Novototsky-Vlasov, V. Yu. (2017). The study of the antisaccade performance and contingent negative variation characteristics in first-episode and chronic schizophrenia patients. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 20. e55. Doi:10.1017/sjp.2017.40