The Neuropsychological Study On Memory Impairment Of Patients With Schizophrenia

Objective To study the working memory, episodic memory and false memory of Chinese patients with schizophrenia; To find out whether the performances of working memory, false memory and episodic memory have correlation to the clinical symptoms in patients with schizophrenia; To test the hypothesis that item memory and source memory which are two different components in episodic memory may have different neural substrate.Methods 40 normal Chinese adults and 40 Chinese patients with schizophrenia were administrated with the task of working memory (n-back); 40 normal Chinese adults and 40 Chinese patients with schizophrenia were administrated with the learning and recognition of high-frequency national Chinese characters and the recall of two stories; 54 normal Chinese adults and 54 Chinese patients with schizophrenia were administrated with the task of episodic memory, which include the learning and recognition of high-frequency national Chinese characters (item memory task) and the learning and recognition of three modes (character, picture, and image) of objects (source memory task). We compare the performances between two groups in these memory tests. The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) is employed for assessing the symptoms of patients with schizophrenia. Analysis within patients with schizophrenia was performed to check the dissociation between item memory and source memory.Results Compared with the Chinese normal adults, the Chinese patients with schizophrenia have impairment in working memory, the response time was significantly longer and the right rate was significantly lower than that in normal persons during...