Memory and attention dysfunctions in story recall in schizophrenia: evidence of a possible frontal malfunctioning.
Story recall deficits in schizophrenia have been related to some deficit in interhemispheric transfer of information, suggestive of a collosal pathology or, alternatively, to malfunctioning in attention and mnesic systems. The present investigation, performed on 61 DSM-IIIR schizophrenic inpatients and 40 age-and education-matched, normal controls demonstrates that story recall deficit is dependent on the length and complexity of the stories. This finding might implicate a critical role for the attention and mnesic functions in determining story recall performances. Both functions have an anatomo-functional substrate in neural circuits involving the frontal lobe, which also plays a critical role in determining the level of the conceptualization and abstraction capacities.
Abbruzzese
M
M
Department of Biomedical and Technological Sciences, University of Milan Medical School, Italy.
Scarone
S
S
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*