[Memory peculiarities in patients with schizophrenia and their first-degree relatives].

Eighty-four families with schizophrenia: 84 patients (probands) and 73 their first-degree unaffected relatives as well as 37 normals and their relatives have been studied using pathopsychological (pictogram) and Luria's neuropsychological tests. The most prominent abnormalities both in patients and relatives were global characteristics of auditory-speech memory predominantly related to left subcortical and left temporal regions. Abnormalities of immediate recall of short logic story (SLS) were connected with dysfunction of the same brain regions. Less prominent delayed recall abnormalities of SLS were revealed only in patients and connected with left subcortical, left subcortical-frontal and left subcortical-temporal zones. This abnormality was absent in relatives and age-matched controls. The span of mediated retention was decreased in patients and, to a less degree, in relatives. A quantitative psychological analysis has demonstrated the disintegration ("schizys") between semantic conception and image memory structure in patients and, to a less degree, in relatives. Data obtained show primary memory abnormalities in families with schizophrenia related to the impairment of decoding information process in the subcortical structures, the left-side dysfunction of brain structures being predominantly typical.

[Neuropsychological approach to the complex study of senile dementia]. / Neiropsikhologicheskii podkhod v kompleksnom izuchenii dementsii pozdnego vozrasta.

Thirty-eight patients with late mentally deteriorating processes were studied. Using a standardized neuropsychological method, the authors have outlined four major variants of neuropsychological syndromes characteristic of damage to definite zones of the brain. Comparison of these data with the results of clinical and computer-aided tomographic examination showed that the neuropsychological approach is an adequate method in the combined study of senile dementia.

[Comparative study of thought characteristics of adolescents healthy and schizophrenic]. / Sravnitel'noe izuchenie osobennostei myehleniia u podrostkov, zdorovykh i bol'nykh shizofreniei

The paper is concerned with selectivity formation in the actulization of knowledge during the process of thinking in cases of abnormal development of adolescents--schizophrenic patients (61 cases). The study was performed in contrast to a control group of normals (114 cases) of the same age and educational census. The results demonstrate changes in the process of selectivity formation in the actualization of knowledge in adolescent schizophrenic patients which was detected in a weakening of the organizing role of the adopting system of social experience during the development of the cognitive activity.