title: Evidence for sustained attention and working memory in schizophrenia sharing a common mechanism.
abstract: Sustained attention and working memory (WM) are closely related functions that may share common mechanisms. The authors assessed sustained attention in schizophrenia patients and healthy comparison subjects using visuomotor tracking tasks under varying distractor loads. The attentional effort expended to deal with distractors was lower in patients and showed significant association with WM, executive function and negative symptoms in that group. It is proposed that the anterior attention system of sustained attention models and the executive function of the WM model describe the same or a closely related mechanism that is located in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and is impaired in schizophrenia.
authors.affiliation: Sha'ar Menashe Mental Health Center, And Director, Brain Behavior Laboratory, Mobile Post Hefer 38814, Israel. mdsilver@tx.technion.ac.il
authors.forename: Henry
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Silver
authors.forename: Pablo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Feldman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000503:physiopathology*