Criterion and Construct Validity of the CogState Schizophrenia Battery in Japanese Patients with Schizophrenia

BACKGROUND: The CogState Schizophrenia Battery (CSB), a computerized cognitive battery, covers all the same cognitive domains as the Measurement and Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia (MATRICS) Consensus Cognitive Battery but is briefer to conduct. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the criterion and construct validity of the Japanese language version of the CSB (CSB-J) in Japanese patients with schizophrenia. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Forty Japanese patients with schizophrenia and 40 Japanese healthy controls with matching age, gender, and premorbid intelligence quotient were enrolled. The CSB-J and the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia, Japanese-language version (BACS-J) were performed once. The structure of the CSB-J was also evaluated by a factor analysis. Similar to the BACS-J, the CSB-J was sensitive to cognitive impairment in Japanese patients with schizophrenia. Furthermore, there was a significant positive correlation between the CSB-J composite score and the BACS-J composite score. A factor analysis showed a three-factor model consisting of memory, speed, and social cognition factors. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This study suggests that the CSB-J is a useful and rapid automatically administered computerized battery for assessing broad cognitive domains in Japanese patients with schizophrenia

Schizopsychotic symptom-profiles and biomarkers: Beacons in diagnostic labyrinths

Several avenues of investigation through which the \u27labyrinths\u27 of schizopsychotic diagnosis may be examined, are offered by the consideration of the \u27beacons\u27 of symptom-profiles and biomarkers. Neurodevelopmental issues and risk assessment, neurocognitive factors of predictive necessity, supersensitivity in neurotransmitter systems, the implications of prodromal expressions of the disorder, functional dysconnectivity arising from prefrontal to diverse regional patterns and circuits with a neurodevelopmental origin, and heritable gene characteristics are viewed against the backdrop of the schizophrenia spectrum disorders. The associations between adolescent-adult use of cannabis, on the one hand, and, alternatively, the prevalence of chromosomal abnormalities, e.g., GRIK4 and NPAS3, and mental retardation, on the other hand, with the symptom-profiles of schizopsychosis provide further evidence of emerging biomarkers of biological inheritance factors. The involvement of dopamine D1 and D2 receptors, particularly in prefrontal region, with regard to functional integrity of cognitive systems is reviewed. It would appear that considerations of these disorders imply that one essential hub around which much of the neuropathology revolves may be observed in the various expressions of the cognitive and structural insufficiency

Cognitive symptoms facilitatory for diagnoses in neuropsychiatric disorders: Executive functions and locus of control

Cognitive symptoms, considered in conjunction both with their regional brain and biomarkers as well as affective, attributional and neurode-velopmental components, demonstate ever-increasing complexity to facilitate conceptualization yet, unavoidably, bedevil diagnosis in neuropsychiatry even before considerations of the enigmatic processes in memory, such as executive function and working memory, are drawn into the myriads of equations that await remedial interpretations. Prefrontal and limbic regions of the brain are involved in a diversity of expressions of cognition, normal or dysfunctional, at synaptic, intracellular and molecular levels that mobilize a concatenation of signaling entities. Serotoninergic neurotransission at prefrontal regions directs cogntive-affective entities that mediate decision-making and goal-directed behaviour. Clinical, non-clinical and basic studies challenge attempts to consolidate the multitude of evidence in order to obtain therapeutic notions to alleviate the disordered status of the diagnosed and yet-to-be diagnosed individuals. Locus of control, a concept of some utility in health-seeking procedures, is examined in three self-report studies from the perspective of a cognitive-emotional situation through observations of ordinary, \u27healthy\u27 young and middle-aged individuals, to assess the predictors of internal and external locus of control. A notion based on high level executive functioning in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in individuals characterised by internal locus of control is contrasted with a hypofunctional executive DLPFC, characterising individuals that express an external locus of control, is discussed