The authors sought to increase the rate of cardiometabolic monitoring for patients receiving antipsychotic drugs in an academic outpatient psychiatric clinic serving people with serious mental illness…read more. Soda T, Richards J, Gaynes BN, Cueva M, Laux J, McClain C, Frische R, Lindquist LK, Cuddeback GS, Jarskog LF. Systematic quality improvement and metabolic monitoring for …
Premature mortality in individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs) is largely due to high rates of chronic health conditions. Although exercise has been shown to improve health in this population, scalable and accessible interventions are limited…read more. Orleans-Pobee M, Browne J, Ludwig K, Merritt C, Battaglini CL, Jarskog LF, Sheeran P, Penn DL. Physical Activity …
Recently, infections with emerging zoonotic bacteria of the genus Bartonella have been reported in association with a range of central nervous system (CNS) symptoms. Currently, it remains unknown if Bartonella spp. infection is associated with symptoms of schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder (SCZ/SAD)…read more. Lashnits E, Maggi R, Jarskog F, Bradley J, Breitschwerdt E, Frohlich F. Schizophrenia and …
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a formidable challenge to care continuity for community mental health clients with serious mental illness and for providers who have had to quickly pivot the modes of delivering critical services. Despite these challenges, many of the changes implemented during the pandemic can and should be maintained. This paper represents the …
Challenges in employment are highly prevalent among people with schizophrenia regardless of their employment history. Although supportive employment can be effective, few participants sustain meaningful competitive employment. Our goal was to identify the correlates of developing sustained unemployment…read more. Fundora C, Cruz M, Barone K, Penn DL, Jarskog LF, Pinkham AE, Harvey PD. Lifetime employment …
Based on the results of a double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial or the treatment of auditory hallucinations in patients with schizophreni, findings suggest that tACS may be of future therapeutic value, and weekly tACS may be a means of increasing the durability of clinical benefit. A single patient trial was conducted to further test these results…read …
Poor health and low cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) contribute substantially to the shortened lifespan of individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs). Increasing physical activity has demonstrated value; however, there are limited interventions that are accessible and adequately address motivational challenges. This paper reports on an open trial of Physical Activity Can Enhance Life (PACE-Life), a motivational …
Impairments in social functioning are central to Schizophrenia (SCZ). Patients with SCZ have challenges in the ability to evaluate their functioning. A correlate of self-assessments in SCZ is depression, wherein negligible depression predicts overestimation. Healthy individuals misestimate their functioning, but mild dysthymia predicts accuracy. We examined depression, gender, and schizophrenia as predictors of self-reported everyday …
Black Americans are disproportionately diagnosed with schizophrenia and experience worse objective functional outcomes than their White counterparts. This study assessed race and domains of functioning known to be associated with objective outcomes in a sample of individuals with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders from the Social Cognition Psychometric Evaluation (SCOPE) study…read more. Nagendra A, Halverson TF, Pinkham AE, …
Persons diagnosed with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs) often experience pervasive feelings of loneliness, which are considered a significant barrier to treatment and recovery. As impaired social cognition may contribute to increased loneliness and less skillful social interactions, this study examines the relationships between loneliness and measures of social cognition and functional outcome from the Social …
Psychosocial treatments have demonstrated reliable improvements in social cognition (SC) abilities, highlighting the need for accurate identification of SC deficits for efficient and individualized treatment planning. To this end, the Observable Social Cognition Rating Scale (OSCARS) is a scale with both self and informant versions. This study investigated psychometric properties of the OSCARS as both …
Suicide risk among individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) is intractably high, with over 40% of individuals attempting to take their own lives during their lifetime and an estimated 5-10% completing suicide. Aerobic exercise (AE) has been shown to improve a number of predictors of suicide risk (e.g., depressed mood, sleeping difficulties)…read more. Beck-Felts K, Goodman M, …
Face perception is a highly developed function of the human visual system. Previous studies of event-related potentials (ERPs) have identified a face-selective ERP component in healthy participants. In contrast, patients with schizophrenia exhibit reduced amplitude of the N170 component, which may represent a pathological deficit in the neurophysiology of face perception…read more Ahn S, Lustenberger …
Individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) display cognitive deficits that have been identified as major determinants of poor functioning and disability, representing a serious public health concern and an important target for interventions. At present, available treatments offer only minimal to moderate benefits to ameliorate cognitive deficits. Thus, there remains an urgent need to identify novel interventions …
Cognitive impairment in schizophrenia is a core feature of the disorder. Computerized cognitive training has shown promise in pilot studies. A 26-week randomized blinded placebo-controlled trial was conducted to investigate the effect of a novel computerized cognitive training program on cognitive and functional capacity outcomes…read more. Mahncke HW, Kim SJ, Rose A, Stasio C, Buckley …
Individuals with schizophrenia are impaired in their ability to recognize emotions based on vocal cues and these impairments are associated with poor global outcome. Basic perceptual processes, such as auditory pitch processing, are impaired in schizophrenia and contribute to difficulty identifying emotions. However, previous work has focused on a relatively narrow assessment of auditory deficits …
In comparison to batteries of standard neuropsychological tests, cognitive neuroscience tests may offer a more specific assessment of discrete neurobiological processes that may be aberrant in schizophrenia. The N-back and AX-Continuous Performance Task (AX-CPT) are two promising cognitive neuroscience tests designed to measure specific components of working memory and contextual processing respectively…read more. Kraus MS, …
Impairments in self-assessment in schizophrenia have been shown to have functional and clinical implications. Prior studies have suggested that overconfidence can be associated with poorer cognitive performance in people with schizophrenia, and that reduced awareness of performance may be associated with disability…read more. Jones MT, Deckler E, Laurrari C, Jarskog LF, Penn DL, Pinkham AE, …
Negative symptoms and depression persist in one third of patients with schizophrenia. Previous studies suggested that depression has more impact on self-perceived compared to observer-rated social functions. Reduced emotional experience, a subdomain of negative symptoms, predicts social functioning deficits, although its role in self-assessment is unclear. We examined depression and reduced emotional experience and self-reports …
Negative symptoms and depression persist in one third of patients with schizophrenia. Previous studies suggested that depression has more impact on self-perceived compared to observer-rated social functions. Reduced emotional experience, a subdomain of negative symptoms, predicts social functioning deficits, although its role in self-assessment is unclear. We examined depression and reduced emotional experience and self-reports …
Participants with schizophrenia self-reported their everyday functioning and social cognitive ability as well as their depression. All were rated with the PANSS and a separate rater generated all-sources ratings of everyday functioning and social cognitive ability. Correlations between self-reported everyday functioning and social cognitive ability, ratings of everyday functioning and social cognitive ability, and the …
Deficits in social functioning in schizophrenia are primarily predicted by negative symptoms, social cognition deficits, and social skills deficits. Here we examine those predictive variables across variations in the severity of reduced emotional experience. We hypothesized that in patients with high symptom severity, factors such as social cognition would have reduced importance for predicting social …
The effects of intranasal oxytocin, a neuropeptide involved in prosocial behavior and modulation of neural networks underlying social cognition and emotion regulation, have been studied in schizophrenia. We tested the hypothesis that twice-daily intranasal oxytocin administered for 12-weeks would improve tertiary and exploratory outcomes of self-reported social symptoms, empathy and introspective accuracy from the Jarskog …
Patients with tardive dyskinesia who completed a 12 week, phase 3, placebo-controlled trials were eligible to enter this open-label, single-arm study. The open-label study consisted of a 6 week dose-escalation phase and a long-term maintenance phase of 106 weeks. The objective was to evaluate the long-term safety and efficacy of deutetrabenazine in patients with tardive …
Schizophrenia is considered a neurodevelopmental disorder with a pathophysiology that likely begins long before the onset of clinical symptoms. White matter abnormalities have been observed in schizophrenia and we hypothesized that the first 2 years of life is a period in which white matter abnormalities associated with schizophrenia risk may emerge…read more. Ahn SJ, Cornea …
Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) modulates endogenous neural oscillations in healthy human participants by the application of a low-amplitude electrical current with a periodic stimulation waveform. Yet, it is unclear if tACS can modulate and restore neural oscillations that are reduced in patients with psychiatric illnesses such as schizophrenia. Here, we asked if tACS modulates …
