ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To identify the deficit in willingness to expend effort and its association with negative symptoms in the high-risk for psychosis (CHR) group. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The study included young men: 45 patients, who met CHR criteria and were treated for a depressive episode, and 15 controls. All subjects completed a modified version of the Effort Expenditure for Rewards Task (EEfRT). The CHR group was assessed with the SOPS, SANS and HDRS at the beginning and at the end of treatment. EEfRT was performed only at the end of treatment. RESULTS: The CHR group was significantly less likely to choose high effort tasks across reward probability and magnitude levels compared with the control group (all p<0.001). No significant correlations were found between the rate of selecting the high effort task and the negative syndrome domains of amotivation and diminished expression. The subgroups of CHR with stable and transient (i.e., with a reduction >50% during treatment) negative symptoms, which were identified by a cluster analysis, did not differ in the willingness to expend effort. CONCLUSION: The study confirmed a decrease in the willingness to expend effort in the CHR group; however, this deficit was only weakly correlated with negative symptoms and persisted after the symptoms reduction during treatment, which requires future studies to investigate mechanisms underlying impaired effort expenditure for rewards in CHR.
Subject(s)
Decision Making , Psychotic Disorders , Male , Humans , Motivation , RewardABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To study a role of the interaction of oxytocin pathway gene polymorphisms and adverse childhood experiences (ACE) in facial emotion recognition (FER) deficits in schizophrenia. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (n=699) completed cognitive testing, which included a FER task. We determined patients' genotypes for common polymorphisms in three of the oxytocin pathway genes which were previously associated with face perception: OXTR (rs53576, rs7632287), CD38 (rs3796863) and ARNT2 (rs4778599). The presence of ACE in the patient's history was assessed via an analysis of medical records. RESULTS: In our sample, 49% of participants experienced ACE. ANCOVA adjusted for age and gender revealed a significant interaction effect of OXTR rs53576 with ACE on FER scores (F=11.51; p<0.001; η2p=0.02). The effect remained significant when accounting for cognitive functioning and negative symptoms. Carriers of the A allele without ACE recognized emotions worse than GG homozygotes without ACE (p=0.039) and carriers of the A allele with ACE (p=0.009). CONCLUSION: The results are consistent with the notion of the A (rs53576) allele's role in sensitivity to childhood experiences that influence the psychosocial development and can be used in further studies of the oxytocin treatment of social cognition and social adaptation of patients with schizophrenia.
Subject(s)
Adverse Childhood Experiences , Schizophrenia , Humans , Oxytocin/genetics , Schizophrenia/genetics , Emotions , Polymorphism, GeneticABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: Based on the hypothesis that activation of the immune system is one of the mechanisms of influence of early environmental factors on the onset and course of schizophrenia, we investigated the effects of the interaction of childhood adversity and IL-1ß rs16944, IL-4 rs2243250 and TNF-α rs1800629 polymorphisms on schizophrenia symptomatology. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The sample consisted of 546 patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. The presence of childhood adversity was determined based on the analysis of medical records and a questionnaire completed by the patient. We used the 5-factor model of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) with the nested two-factor negative syndrome model. RESULTS: After adjusting for multiple comparisons, a significant effect of the interaction of childhood adversity and TNF-α on the cognitive/disorganization factor was found, with a difference between genotypes in the group without childhood adversity (pFDR <0.018; η2p=0.03). A significant effect of the interaction of childhood adversity and genotype on the cognitive disorganization syndrome was established (F=5.87; p=0.003; η2p=0.03). Stereotyped thinking and avolition on PANSS had the highest correlations with cognitive disorganization factor (ro=0.84 and ro=0.82, respectively) and the highest significance of differences depending on the interaction of genotype and childhood adversity (Kruskal-Wallis test, H=12.28, p=0.006 and H=12.79, p=0.005, respectively). CONCLUSION: Childhood adversity modifies the relationship between the pathogenesis of schizophrenia and the TNF-α promoter polymorphism rs1800629, which is also an enhancer of another 60 genes located in the major histocompatibility complex.
Subject(s)
Adverse Childhood Experiences , Schizophrenia , Cytokines/genetics , Humans , Interleukin-1beta , Interleukin-4/genetics , Polymorphism, Genetic , Schizophrenia/genetics , Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha/geneticsABSTRACT
Establishing the structure of schizotypal traits and its cross-cultural and demographic universality is an important condition for increasing the effectiveness of prognosis of schizophrenic spectrum disorders and basic research on their etiology. The present study aimed to explore the structure of schizotypal traits measured by the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ-74) in the Russian population. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of the factor structure of SPQ-74 were performed using a sample of 1316 people of a wide age range. It is shown that, in the Russian population, the four-factor «paranoid¼ model of N. Stefanis et al. had the best fit for the data. The multivariate confirmatory analysis evidenced the gender invariance of the model.
