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Biomedical subjects

M Marie-Cardine

Publications and source records attributed to M Marie-Cardine.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Abnormal peripheral auditory asymmetry in schizophrenia.

OBJECTIVE: Auditory processing difficulties have been reported in schizophrenia. This study explores peripheral auditory function in patients with schizophrenia in whom certain early disturbances of auditory message filtering have been found and may be associated with certain abnormalities which are particularly localised in the left temporal lobe. METHODS: Otoacoustic emissions, including click evoked and spontaneous emissions and measurements of functioning of the medial olivocochlear efferent system were obtained from 12 chronic schizophrenic patients and compared with normative data recorded from 12 normal controls. RESULTS: Otoacoustic emission amplitudes and medial olivocochlear functioning were similar between the normal controls and schizophrenic patients; the schizophrenic patients did, however, differ from the normal controls in otoacoustic emission intensity and in medial olivocochlear asymmetry. A tendency to a higher number of spontaneous peaks, and a significantly higher click evoked otoacoustic emission response amplitude were found in the right ear compared with the left ear of schizophrenic patients. For the medial olivocochlear system, whereas normal controls showed greater attenuation in the right than in the left ear, schizophrenic patients lacked such an asymmetry. CONCLUSION: In the absence of any attention task, the findings show disturbed peripheral lateralisation in schizophrenia of mechanisms involved in auditory information filtering. Such a lack of right ear advantage in medial olivocochlear functioning may thus be a peripheral reflection of central lateralisation anomalies.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed2001

Defective recognition of one's own actions in patients with schizophrenia.

OBJECTIVE: The possibility that delusions of influence could be related to abnormal recognition of one's own actions was investigated in persons with schizophrenia. METHOD: Schizophrenic patients with (N=6) and without (N=18) delusions of influence were compared with normal subjects (N=29) on an action recognition task. The image of a virtual right hand holding a joystick was presented to the subjects through a mirror so that the image was superimposed on their real hand holding a real joystick. Subjects executed discrete movements in different directions. Angular biases and temporal delays were randomly introduced in some trials, such that the movement of the virtual hand departed from the movement executed by the subjects. After each trial, subjects were asked whether the movement they saw was their own. RESULTS: Compared with normal subjects, both patient groups made significantly more recognition errors in trials with temporal delays. In trials with angular biases, the error rate of patients with delusions of influence significantly differed from that of comparison subjects and from that of patients without delusions of influence. CONCLUSIONS: The findings support the hypothesis that delusions of influence are associated with a quantifiable difficulty in correct self-attribution of actions. This difficulty may be related to a specific impairment of a neural action attribution system.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Confusion between silent and overt reading in schizophrenia.

The present study was aimed at investigating whether schizophrenic patients are impaired in monitoring their own speech. In particular, we attempted to assess their ability to discriminate between overt and covert speech in a reading task, in order to verify whether they can correctly recollect the modality in which an internally generated action is produced. Subjects were asked to read either silently or aloud, items from a list of words. After a delay of 5 min, they were required to indicate in a new list which words had been read previously (either silently or overtly), or had never been presented during the reading task. With respect to normal controls, schizophrenic patients showed a significant bias to report that they had read aloud words which they had actually read silently, or which were absent during the reading task. The results are discussed in relation to recent neuroimaging studies on inner and overt speech in hallucinating schizophrenic patients. Our data favour the hypothesis that the inability to correctly discriminate between inner and overt speech may play a role in the onset of schizophrenic hallucinations.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Neuropsychological deficit in siblings discordant for schizophrenia.

This study was aimed, first, at detecting neuropsychological markers that assess vulnerability to schizophrenia in siblings of patients with schizophrenia, and second, at exploring possible relationships between markers. For these purposes, performances were assessed in 18 clinically stabilized patients with schizophrenia, 18 of their unaffected full siblings, and 15 controls on attentional abilities (the Degraded Stimuli-Continuous Performance Task [DS-CPT] and the Span of Apprehension [SOA] task) and on executive functions (the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test [WCST]). Both patients and siblings were impaired on the three tasks, leading to the conclusion that these poor performances may represent markers of genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia. Furthermore, significant relationships were found between DS-CPT and WCST performance in patients only, suggesting a possible implication of prefrontal brain areas for the two tasks. In spite of the lack of similar relationships between DS-CPT and WCST in siblings, this raises the question of a putative role of prefrontal areas in vulnerability to schizophrenia.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Auditory event-related potentials and clinical scores in unmedicated schizophrenic patients.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) have been widely examined in schizophrenic patients. However, although neuroleptic medication could be a potentially confounding variable, studies with unmedicated patients are relatively scarce. The present work was undertaken to determine whether ERP abnormalities persist in stabilized schizophrenic patients after drug withdrawal. In addition, ERP amplitudes and latencies were compared with clinical ratings (the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale, PANSS) by means of Spearman rank order correlation coefficients. The P300 and N200 responses to rare tones and the P200 and N100 responses to frequent tones were recorded in 20 clinically stabilized drug-free schizophrenic patients and 19 age-matched control subjects during a two-tone discrimination task. Major findings were that the schizophrenic patients had reduced P300, N200 and N100 amplitudes and an increased P300 latency. The P300 amplitude was negatively correlated with age in patients. The P200 latency was negatively correlated with the PANSS positive syndrome score. The ERP abnormalities shown in this study appear to be enduring traits of the disorder as they persist in stabilized patients even after drug withdrawal.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

[Psychotherapy in depression].

The field of psychotherapies has in general widely evolved for these ten last years in France and more in depressive disorders treatment, namely owing to short structured therapies development and especially cognitive-behaviour therapies well fitted for controlled studies assessment. Pyschoanalytically oriented psychotherapies have also changed but not so much and they still remain less efficacious in this area. Henceforth the numerous technicals of this kind of therapy will be modified in the eclective and integrative approach; they must not be compared in opposition one another but used in a collaborative way on the basis of scientific data in order to make them more effective. So some very exciting prospects are open in the future of that field of research. Practically, nowadays the best outcomes are obtained in the association of both antidepressant drugs and cognitive-behavior psychotherapy.

Antidepressive Agents↗
PubMed1998

Gaze discrimination is unimpaired in schizophrenia.

Interpersonal communication is largely dependent on interpretation of facial expression and emotion. Difficulties in face processing, and more specifically in gaze discrimination, have been described in schizophrenic patients. According to Baron-Cohen (Mindblindness. M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995), gaze discrimination relies on the functioning of a specific cognitive module, the Eye Direction Detector (EDD). It has been proposed [Rosse et al. (1994) Gaze discrimination in patients with schizophrenia: preliminary report. American Journal of Psychiatry 151, 919-921] that an impairment in gaze discrimination is present in schizophrenia, and plays a fundamental role in inducing the paranoid symptoms reported by many patients. However, in the previous studies, gaze direction detection and interpretation of gaze have never been completely dissociated. The present experiment attempts to test the schizophrenics' skill in a simple gaze direction detection task. A series of photographic portraits of models looking at different directions have been presented to 22 schizophrenic patients and 36 control subjects. For each portrait subjects were asked to determine whether gaze was directed to the right or to the left by pressing a keyboard key. A forced choice paradigm was used. No differences were reported between schizophrenic patients and control subjects. That is, in the present paradigm, schizophrenic patients did not show any specific impairment in detecting the direction of gaze of the portraits. The results are discussed according to the notion that a dissociation is present in schizophrenia between implicit and explicit processes. The present case illustrates how the more automatic elementary functions, such as the detection of gaze direction, may be spared in schizophrenic patients, whereas explicit cognitive functions are likely more affected.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Anomia in major depressive state.

Anomia, or word finding difficulty, is a frequent clinical symptom of the depressive state. This study investigates naming and lexicalization processes (or word production processes) in 11 depressive patients (major depressive state), through a picture naming task of 53 images corresponding to low frequency words. Depressives showed significantly more anomia and made more naming errors (semantically related substitution words) than control subjects. Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states, which correspond to an impairment at a later stage of phonological encoding with partial activation of phonological shape, remained rare in depressives despite the increase of lexicalization difficulties observed. Anomia observed in depressives could thus be related to an impairment at the early stage of lexicalization or word production processes (pre-phonological item selection and access, or storage of the semantic lexical item in Working Memory for further phonological encoding), without lexical-semantic disorganization. We discuss the relationship between such an elementary speech production disorder and cognitive impairments demonstrated in the depressive state (deficit of effortful and attentional processes, impairment in activation or initiation of cognitive processes and responses).

Adult↗
PubMed1994

Seasonality of birth and ventricular enlargement in chronic schizophrenia.

Many studies have established that birth dates during the winter and early spring months are more common in schizophrenic patients than in the general population. It has been hypothesized that children born in winter are more likely to be exposed to environmental factors which could lead to the development of schizophrenia later in life. Another finding of interest has been the demonstration in brain-imaging studies that mild ventricular enlargement is more often found in schizophrenic patients than in healthy control subjects. In the present report, an increased incidence of ventricular enlargement was found in schizophrenic patients born in the winter months. Although the relationship between seasonality of birth and brain abnormalities is unclear, these phenomena could be partly linked.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

Relationship between symptoms rated with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale and brain measures in schizophrenia.

The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) was used to rate clinical symptoms in 42 inpatients with schizophrenia before they were examined by computed tomography. Significantly higher mean size of lateral and third ventricles, and higher mean cortical atrophy were found in schizophrenic patients compared with healthy control subjects. Ventricular enlargement and cortical atrophy were significantly related to low scores on the Composite subscale of the PANSS. Positive correlations were observed mainly with negative items such as blunted affect, emotional withdrawal, difficulties in abstract thinking, passive-apathetic social withdrawal, and lack of spontaneity of conversation. Additional positive correlations were observed with two items from the General Psychopathology subscale (mannerisms and disorientation). Inverse correlations were found with most positive items. These results suggest a relationship between brain structural abnormalities and the symptomatology of schizophrenia recorded with PANSS.

Adult↗