Assessment of Mental Imagery of Movement in Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia patients often present with neurological signs such as left/right confusion, impaired coordination of movements, and motor abnormalities may occur secondary to antipsychotic medications. Neuropsychological tests identify various dysfunctions, such as difficulty in focusing attention, difficulty in abstract thinking or difficulty in changing the response frame, while Neurophysiological tests show slowing down of reaction time, problems with eye tracking, etc. There are no studies in the international literature dealing with the investigation of mental imagery of movement in Greek patients with schizophrenia. Also, the position that patients with schizophrenia – regardless of their symptom profile, age, sex, and chronicity of the disease – have a permanent difficulty in creating and manipulating an internal model of their movement prediction, has not been substantiated enough to date. Aim: In the present study we examine the function of visual-motor coordination and the time to achieve the goal-directed movement of the dominant hand of patients with schizophrenia Method: The sample we used in our research consisted of patients with diagnosed schizophrenia and healthy individuals. Schizophrenia patients belonged to the experimental group and healthy subjects to the control group. The number of examined patients was 39 and the healthy 51. the assessment of the movement and its mental representation was carried out with the real and mental movement of the dominant hand between two square targets located at a distance of 20 cm, on white paper of A4 size. Conclusions: Visuomotor coordination of a specific hand movement differs between patients with schizophrenia and the normal population. In particular, the means of the goal-directed hand movement achievement time in the actual execution condition and in the mental execution condition of the patients were significantly higher than the corresponding times of the standard population.