Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia involves marked deficits in sensory-guided behavior, yet the behavioral consequences of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor hypofunction for auditory decision-making, and whether they differ by sex, remain unclear. We trained female and male rats on an operant auditory oddball task requiring responses to rare deviant tones (go context) while withholding responses to frequent standa…

Abstract Schizophrenia is associated with deficits in input processing, but the underlying neural dynamics of this deficit remain unclear. A recent model proposes temporal imprecision as a basic disturbance driving the input processing deficit. To address the question of whether temporal imprecision affects all three domains of the brain’s signal (e.g., phase, time, and frequency) as early as fir…

Treatment-resistant schizophrenia (TRS) affects roughly 20–30% of people diagnosed with schizophrenia and is linked to poorer clinical and functional outcomes. Its molecular basis, however, remains only partly understood. In this study, we integrated transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS) results from two large schizophrenia genome-wide association studies (GWAS): one reflecting broad schizo…

This brief’s objective was to examine variation in first-episode psychosis (FEP) incidence rates by applying previously published study criteria to U.S. MarketScan claims data. Estimated FEP incidence rates ranged from 20 to 163 per 100,000 individuals, highlighting the need for standardization. Factors contributing to this variation included ICD coding definitions, age range, duration of continu…

There is growing interest in using digital health technologies to overcome limitations of traditional negative symptom assessment in schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD). For example, computerized speech analysis has been used to quantify speech and language changes associated with negative symptom severity in SSD. However, the large number of speech features and variability across studies make…

The early phase of schizophrenia is critical for rehabilitation outcomes: LAI antipsychotics can help in the clinical stabilization, but Evidence-Based Psychosocial Interventions (EBPI) are important to improve real-world psychosocial functioning. The present study aimed to assess the implementation and outcomes of EBPI in real-world clinical settings in people in the early phase of schizophrenia…

Abstract Reasoning biases play a crucial role in the formation and maintenance of delusions. In psychosis, it is unclear whether these biases cluster onto similar underlying factors or represent independent constructs. The current study presents data on task-based reasoning biases and self-reported cognitive biases, as well as cognition and affect. Using these data, we aimed to understand mechani…

Schizophrenia (SCZ) remains an etiological and therapeutic challenge, this article aims to explore the mediating role of lncRNA between chronic childhood stress and SCZ for providing a scientific basis of SCZ prevention. 200 SCZ patients and 200 healthy controls (HCs) were enrolled by convenience sampling. Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and Childhood Chronic Stress Questionaire (CCS…

Thalamocortical circuits regulate information flow between sensory inputs and higher-order processing, and their disruption is increasingly implicated in psychotic disorders. However, scalable biomarkers of this circuitry remain limited. We assessed P50 sensory gating, 40 Hz auditory steady-state responses (ASSRs) and sleep spindles in relation to resting-state thalamocortical connectivity in ear…

Genetic analyses of schizophrenia (SCZ) patients have identified thousands of risk factors. In silico protein-protein interaction (PPI) network analysis has provided strong evidence that disrupted PPI networks underlie SCZ pathogenesis. In this study, we performed in vivo PPI analysis of several SCZ risk factors (i.e., Grin2b, Grm5, Gsk3b, Map2k1, Ppp1ca, Stx1a, Syngap1, and Syt1) in the rodent b…

Symptom severity in schizophrenia has been repeatedly associated with thinner cortical gray matter. While global and regional white matter microstructure alterations in schizophrenia are well-documented, their association with clinical symptom severity remains unclear. As this is likely due to methodological heterogeneity across studies, we tested whether symptom severity in schizophrenia was ass…

Persistent negative symptoms (PNS), defined as negative symptoms of at least moderate severity that endure over time and are not attributable to other psychopathological dimensions such as depression or parkinsonism, have been associated with poor functional outcomes in schizophrenia, in both chronic stages and in the early phases of the disorder. This post-hoc analysis of a large cohort of schiz…

Studies on the presence of anti-NMDA receptor antibodies were done primarily on the European population. This study investigates the prevalence of anti-NMDA antibodies among adult patients presenting with first-onset psychosis in an acute medical setting in the predominantly Chinese population of Hong Kong (n = 109), and our results suggest that such prevalence is low in this population (1.8%), e…

The dual-hit model of schizophrenic psychoses suggests that epigenetic alterations may contribute to the disease pathogenesis. Given the significant synaptic loss in patients with schizophrenia (SZ) during puberty, we investigated DNA-methylation patterns of key synaptic target molecules: dopamine transporter (DAT), dopamine receptor D2 (DRD2), microtubule-associated protein tau (MAPT), and posts…

Resting-state fMRI studies consistently demonstrate widespread dysconnectivity in schizophrenia (SZ), yet conventional analytic methods often fail to account for individual variability in functional brain organization. This study utilized individualized assessments of network size and topography to examine functional alterations in early psychosis. MRI data were drawn from the Human Connectome Pr…

Psychological interventions for delusions may be enhanced by targeting their presumed causal factors. An emotion-oriented variant of cognitive behavioral therapy for delusions (CBTd-E), designed to target affect regulation and maladaptive schemata, was evaluated for its effect on delusions. A single-blind, multicenter, randomized, waitlist-controlled trial was conducted in three German outpatient…

Pragmatic language impairments-difficulties using language effectively in social contexts-are common in adults suffering from severe mental illnesses (SMIs) such as schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD), major depressive disorder (MDD), and bipolar disorder (BD). These impairments hinder social functioning and recovery but have been explored most widely using comprehension tasks, with pragmatic …

The pharmacological treatment of negative symptoms in schizophrenia remains a major unmet need. Among these, impairments in social functioning - manifesting as reduced adaptability and social withdrawal - are particularly disabling, as they persist beyond remission of positive symptoms and impede social reintegration. To investigate the neurobiological basis of behavioral impairments, we employed…