title: Early visual information processing in schizophrenia compared to recurrent depression.
abstract: Patients with schizophrenia have repeatedly shown deficits in early visual processing using backward masking (VBM) tasks. Whether this represents a specific dysfunction in schizophrenia is an unsolved question. Patients with recurrent unipolar depression represent an interesting comparison group to examine the question of specificity, but have never previously been assessed on VBM. In addition to comparing VBM performance in patients with schizophrenia and patients with depression, we wanted to examine the relations between VBM and clinical symptoms. Fifty-one patients with schizophrenia were compared to 49 patients with recurrent unipolar depression and 47 healthy controls. All subjects were administered a two-digit identification task in a no-masking and four masking conditions. Patients with schizophrenia performed significantly worse than normal controls on four of the five conditions. No significant difference was found between depression patients and normal controls. The effect of masking stimuli had no differential effects on the three groups. VBM correlated strongly with positive symptoms in the schizophrenia group.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1094, Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway. b.r.rund@psykologi.uio.no
authors.forename: Bjørn Rishovd
authors.initials: BR
authors.lastname: Rund
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Egeland
authors.forename: Kjetil
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sundet
authors.forename: Arve
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Asbjørnsen
authors.forename: Kenneth
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hugdahl
authors.forename: Nils Inge
authors.initials: NI
authors.lastname: Landrø
authors.forename: Anders
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lund
authors.forename: Atle
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Roness
authors.forename: Kirsten I
authors.initials: KI
authors.lastname: Stordal
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005556:Form Perception / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology*; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012008:Recurrence; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*