Cognitive Neuropsychiatry最新文献

Background and hypothesis: Adaptive management of guilt and shame is regulated by social approach and withdrawal and thus relates to the quantity and quality of our social interactions. People with schizophrenia (SZ) self-report reduced guilt-proneness compared to healthy controls (HC). However, previous studies have not distinguished between anticipatory and consequential guilt, nor between guilty affect and associated action tendencies.

Study design: We compared 24 SZ with 24 HC on anticipatory guilt, (TOSCA-3, GASP); consequential guilt (PFQ-2), and empathy and Theory of Mind (ToM).

Study results: Differing profiles emerged: SZ reported higher consequential relative to anticipatory guilt, while HC reported the opposite pattern. SZ self-reported reduced repair and increased withdrawal compared to HC. In SZ, anticipatory guilt was predicted by empathic concern and ToM; consequential guilt by social withdrawal and ToM skill.

Conclusion: SZ participants anticipated equal affective guilt-proneness but reduced adaptive behavioural responses to guilty feelings, resulting in more chronic guilt in daily life than would be predicted by TOSCA-3 and GASP responses. The discrepancy between emotional experience and expression may partly explain previous findings of reduced TOSCA-3 guilt-proneness, as TOSCA-3 operationalises guilt as reparative, prosocial behaviours. Results highlight perceptions of reparation potential as an intervention target, with likely downstream reductions in chronic and delusional guilt and shame.

Introduction: Depressed mood and anhedonia increase steadily through adolescence, and their associations become more tied at the transition to adulthood. However, it remains unclear whether the relationship is best explained by reciprocal influences or by a third variable.

Method: This longitudinal study investigated the co-development and bidirectional relationships between the two symptoms over three waves among first-year university students (Mean age = 18.24 years, SD = 0.80, 41% male) using latent growth models, parallel latent growth modelling and random-intercept cross-lagged panel models. The moderating effects of childhood maltreatment on their links were explored as well.

Results: In general, depressed mood and state/trait anhedonia decreased concomitantly over time after entering university. The majority of students (90%) decreased in depressed mood and anhedonia over time, while the remaining 10% progressively increased. At the between-person level, increases in depressed mood were accompanied by increases in state/trait anhedonia. However, these symptoms did not reciprocally predict each other at the within-person level. Multiple-group analyses found that depressed mood and state anhedonia reciprocally influenced among individuals with higher levels of childhood maltreatment.

Conclusion: These findings emphasised that the core elements of major depressive disorder were not directly related to each other, but rather that moderating factors play a role.

Background: Capgras syndrome (CS) is a rare delusional misidentification syndrome in which individuals believe that another person has been replaced by an impostor.

Methods: A retrospective chart review was conducted for all admissions to two male psychiatric inpatient departments in a tertiary hospital in Israel between August 1, 2024, and January 31, 2025. Cases with explicit documentation of CS were included. Demographic and clinical data were extracted and analyzed.

Results: Among 308 hospitalised patients, five (1.62%) met criteria for CS, with a mean age of 33.6 years. Three patients (60%) had schizophrenia spectrum disorders, and two (40%) had organic psychosis associated with left frontal brain lesions. Four patients (80%) presented during their first psychiatric admission after committing severe violence against family members perceived as impostors. Treatment response varied: CS resolved in some cases with antipsychotics alone, while others required Clozapine and adjunctive interventions.

Conclusions: CS may be underrecognized but carries significant clinical implications, particularly due to its association with violence in first-episode psychosis. Early identification and tailored treatment are critical for risk reduction.

Introduction: Approximately 6.9% to 8.9% of nongeriatric adults in the United States report persistent symptoms following SARS-CoV-2, one of which being persistent cognitive concerns. Across clinical populations, discrepancies have been identified between subjective cognitive concerns and performance on objective neurocognitive measures, such that subjective cognitive concerns often do not correlate with objective neurocognitive deficits.

Methods: The current study investigated the relationship between subjective cognitive concerns and objective neurocognitive test performance in a sample of 54 nongeriatric adults who underwent outpatient neuropsychological evaluation due to SARS-CoV-2 related persistent cognitive concerns. Multiple linear regressions analysed the relationship between reported cognitive concerns and objective neurocognitive test performance, as well as the relationship between depression and anxiety and subjective cognitive concerns.

Results: Subjective cognitive concerns did not significantly predict performance on objective neurocognitive test measures. Increased self-reported symptoms of depression and anxiety predicted the presence of subjective cognitive concerns, with depressive symptom endorsement serving as the primary predictor.

Conclusions: Results suggest that internalising psychopathology may be an important marker of subjective cognitive concerns in this population. While the origins of internalising symptoms are unclear, the impact of these factors emphasises the need for comprehensive support in addressing long-term effects experienced by individuals following SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Introduction: Individuals with schizophrenia often show impairments in emotional facial expression recognition and empathy, although the precise nature of these social cognitive deficits remains unresolved. This study aims to overcome previous assessment limitations by comparing static and dynamic emotion facial expression recognition, as well as self-reported and situational empathy tasks, in schizophrenia patients and healthy controls. Correlations between these abilities and symptomatology were also explored.

Methods: This cross-sectional observational study involved 20 participants with schizophrenia and 20 controls. They completed tasks assessing facial expression recognition using static (photographs) and dynamic (videos) stimuli and empathy through a self-report (Interpersonal Reactivity Index) and situational tasks. Symptomatology was also examined for their influence on social cognitive abilities.

Results: Schizophrenia patients exhibit deficits in static facial expressions recognition and in self-reported empathic abilities. Nevertheless, performance in dynamic facial expressions recognition and situational empathy tasks was similar in both groups. No correlations were found between these abilities and symptomatology.

Conclusions: Our data suggest that the way in which emotional facial expression recognition and empathy skills are measured provide different measures of the ability of individuals with schizophrenia. This should be taken into consideration in order not to underestimate the performance of such patients.

Introduction: Methamphetamine (MA) abuse remains a critical issue in Taiwan, with impaired inhibitory control contributing to relapse. However, limited research has examined deficits in prepotent response inhibition across both "cool" (neutral) and "hot" (drug-related) contexts in MA abstainers. This study aimed to investigate these aspects of inhibitory control using a modified antisaccade task.

Methods: Twenty-four male MA abstainers and twenty-four healthy controls (HC) completed counterbalanced "cool" and "hot" antisaccade tasks. The "hot" condition used MA-related images as distractor backgrounds, while the "cool" condition featured visually similar neutral images. Prepotent response inhibition was assessed across conditions, and correlations with addiction severity, treatment duration, use history, and days of abstinence were analyzed.

Results: No significant interaction between group and condition or main effects of group and condition were found. However, in abstainers, prepotent response inhibition in both conditions positively correlated with days of abstinence but not with addiction severity, treatment duration, or use history.

Conclusions: Findings suggest that prepotent response inhibition is more closely linked to recent abstinence duration than long-term addiction severity or treatment history. Future interventions should target inhibitory control in MA abstainers to reduce relapse risk and improve long-term recovery outcomes.

Background: Psychotic-like experiences may reflect disrupted signal discrimination, whereby individuals overinterpret noisy sensory input as meaningful. Drawing on predictive coding accounts, we investigated whether increased sensory precision and reduced data-gathering relate to psychotic-like experiences in a signal discrimination task.

Methods: We fitted drift-diffusion models to Random Dot Motion (RDM) task data completed by 191 participants. We estimated drift rate and decision threshold: (1) across groups differing in psychotic phenotypes, and (2) as outcomes in regression models with psychotic-like experiences as predictors. Drift rate measures evidence gain and, in this task, can be considered an approximate measure of sensory precision. We also tested whether reduced data-gathering on the beads task replicated prior associations with psychotic phenotypes.

Results: Hallucination- and delusion-like experiences were associated with increased drift rates. Hallucination-like experiences also predicted lower decision thresholds. In the beads task, psychotic-like experiences correlated with higher confidence ratings but not with reduced data-gathering.

Conclusions: Our findings indicate that psychotic-like phenomenology is linked to increased precision of signal discrimination and reduced decision thresholds. Overprecise signal discrimination and lower decision thresholds may bias perceptual inference toward false positive detections, potentially leading to anomalous experiences.

Introduction: Schizophrenia (SCZ) spectrum is characterised by aberrant processing of social cues. However, little is known about the specific stages of visual attention and their connection to subclinical and clinical symptoms in psychosis. This study aimed to investigate the visual processing of social and non-social parts of naturalistic scenes, and its link to positive and negative symptoms.

Methods: Employing eye-tracking and a free-viewing paradigm, we tested 27 individuals with SCZ and 28 matched controls and compared them on measures capturing both attention orientation (first fixation latency, velocity of entry saccade) and attention maintenance (duration of duration, number of saccades).

Results: We did not find significant differences in attentional processing between schizophrenia and the control group. However, we observed that the severity of positive symptoms was associated with a delayed attention orientation toward the social aspects of the scenes, whereas negative symptoms were correlated with delayed attention orientation toward non-social contexts.

Conclusion: Our results reveal distinct relationship profiles between positive and negative symptoms in schizophrenia and early stages of visual attention to social vs. non-social stimuli.

Introduction: Suicide is a behaviour whose motivation is challenging to explain as it can neither be rewarded nor punished since the agent no longer exists. The conventional explanation is that suicide is motivated as an escape from unresolvable psychological pain. However, despite suicide's high availability, its rates are very low (about 0.014% in the US). This speaks to high ambivalence as an essential feature of the suicidal mind.Method: To explicate the ambivalence of the suicidal mind, suicide has recently been framed within the active inference framework (AIF). AIF appears to be appropriate for conceptualising suicide because it is a theory of choice behaviour under uncertainty that, in suicide, cannot be resolved or, validated by experience. Moreover, AIF is based on the free-energy principle, which is proposed as a principle underwriting the very existence of sentient systems.Results: In this paper, we frame suicidal decision-making as the balance between the expected free energy of survival vs. suicide action policies. Based on this frame, we develop intuitions about the dynamics of suicidal decision-making. These intuitions are then proposed as guides for future research into suicidal decisions as well as suicide prevention.

Background: Self-defining memories are emotionally intense memories that help people define who they are. While such memories play a central role in self-concept and emotional well-being, little is known about how they are affected in Korsakoff's syndrome (KS).

Methods: We invited patients with KS and healthy control participants to retrieve self-defining memories, which were then analysed for specificity (specific vs. general events), emotional valence (positive vs. negative) and integration of meaning (whether the memory was connected to a broader understanding of the self or life experience).

Results: The analysis demonstrated no significant differences between patients with KS and controls in terms of specificity. However, compared with control participants, patients with KS produced more negative and non-integrated self-defining memories. Within-groups comparisons demonstrated more specific than general self-defining memories in patients with KS and control participants. These memories were mainly negative in patients with KS and positive in control participants, non-integrated in patients with KS but integrated in control participants.

Conclusions: These findings demonstrate no difficulties in patients with KS to retrieve specific self-defining memories; however, these memories seem to be mainly related to negative events and enduring concerns or unresolved conflicts.