The relationship between antisaccades, smooth pursuit, and executive dysfunction in first-episode schizophrenia.
BACKGROUND
Both oculomotor and neuropsychologic deficits have been used to support the hypothesis that schizophrenia is associated with prefrontal cortex dysfunction, but studies that have specifically investigated the relationships between these deficits have produced inconsistent findings.


METHODS
We measured both smooth pursuit and antisaccade performance in a large group (n = 109) of patients with first-episode schizophrenia and a group of matched control subjects (n = 59) and investigated the relationship between performance on these tasks and performance on a range of executive tasks. We additionally explored the relationship between these variables and measures of psychopathology at presentation and duration of untreated psychosis.


RESULTS
Antisaccade errors were significantly correlated with spatial working memory performance. Smooth pursuit gain did not correlate with any neuropsychologic measure. There were no reliable correlations between either oculomotor variables and measures of psychopathology and duration of untreated psychosis.


CONCLUSIONS
These findings suggest that in schizophrenia working memory and antisaccade performance reflect the same abnormal prefrontal substrates and that smooth pursuit is mediated by a separate neural abnormality.
Department of Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.
Samuel B
SB
Hutton
Vyv
V
Huddy
Thomas R E
TR
Barnes
Trevor W
TW
Robbins
Trevor J
TJ
Crawford
Christopher
C
Kennard
Eileen M
EM
Joyce
D000328:Adult; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011698:Pursuit, Smooth / Q000502:physiology*; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology*; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology; D013223:Statistics as Topic