A Control Study of Neuropsychological Function in 35 Schizophrenic Patients

Objective: To evaluate the neurocognitive function in 35 schizophrenia patients by a series of standardized neuropsychological tests.Methods:Thirty-five schizophrenia patients including patients untreated(n=15),treated with anti-psychotics less than 1 week(n=8),or more than 1 month(n=15),20 matched healthy controls were involved,and 12 patients including unmedicated(n=6) and medicated less than 1 week(n=6) were followed up after 4 weeks.Patients and controls were evaluated by several neuropsychological tests designed to measure learning,memory,attention,information processing and executive function.Results:Healthy controls performed better than schizophrenia patients in the majority of cognitive tests(P0.05).In the Spatial Span Test,patients who were medicated more than 1 month performed better than patients who were unmedicated(P0.05).An improvement was found at follow-up in both patient groups(P0.05) in the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised(HVLT-R),Brief Visuospatial Memory Test-revised(BVMT-R) and Spatial Span Test.Conclusion:The findings indicate that schizophrenia patients exhibit a wide range of impairments incluoling learning,memory,working memory,attention/concentration,information processing,and executive function,Although antipsychotics have not significantly changes on the neurocognitive function in schizophrenia patients,the unmedicated patients' neurocognitive function are worse,and the antipsychotics might have some effects on verbal memory,visual-spatial memory and visual working memory.