title: Neuropsychological profile in patients with schizotypal personality disorder or schizophrenia.
abstract: Neuropsychological impairments have been consistently reported in patients with schizophrenia. As little is known whether subjects with schizotypal personality disorder exhibit neurocognitive dysfunction similar to that in schizophrenia, we assessed the neuropsychological profile of 15 subjects with schizotypal personality disorder and compared it with that for 15 patients with schizophrenia and for 15 psychiatrically normal volunteers. All participants were administered a standard neuropsychological battery assessing language ability, spatial ability, visuomotor function, verbal memory, visual memory, auditory attention, visual attention, and executive function. Performance on most of the cognitive domains was impaired in patients with schizotypal personality disorder but less than patients with schizophrenia. Specifically, impairment in verbal memory and visuomotor ability in patients with schizotypal personality disorder and patients with schizophrenia were comparable, while patients with schizophrenia performed worse on the test of executive function than did patients with schizotypal personality disorder. As a whole, cognitive deficits in patients with schizotypal personality disorder were qualitatively similar to, but quantitatively milder than, those for patients with schizophrenia. The results suggest that cognitive abilities related to frontotemporal lobe function are disturbed across these schizophrenia-spectrum disorders.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, School of Medicine, Toyama Medical and Pharmaceutical University, 2630 Sugitani, Toyama 930-0194, Japan. mmatsui@ms.toyama-mpu.ac.jp
authors.forename: Mié
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Matsui
authors.forename: Tomiki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sumiyoshi
authors.forename: Kanade
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kato
authors.forename: Eiichi
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Yoneyama
authors.forename: Masayoshi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kurachi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000175:diagnosis*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012569:Schizotypal Personality Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012737:Sex Factors