Objectives : The purpose of this study was to investigate the clinical characteristics and neurocognitive functions in schizophrenia patients with treatment-resistant auditory hallucination.
Methods : The 30 patients with treatment-resistant hallucination (hallucinating patients) were compared with 31 patients without hallucination (non-hallucinating patients) and 30 normal controls. The hallucinating patients included the schizophrenic patients who reported not-remitting hallucinations for 2 years in spite of appropriate treatments. The non-hallucinating patients included schizophrenic patients who had chronic illness course, and not reporting hallucination within 2 years. The hallucination characteristics and neurocognitive were measured by self report questionnaires on hallucination ; functions Wisconsin card sorting test (WCST), Continuous performance test (CPT) and Sentence repetition test (SRT) among three groups. Psychopathology, depressive symptomps and extrapyramidal symtomps were measured by Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS), Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS), Beck depression Inventory (13131) and Extrapyramidal Symptom Rating Scale (ESRS), separately.
Results : The auditory hallucinations 1 or 2 times a day (33%), with the contents of criticising and cursing (26%) were most frequent. Hallucinating patients did not feel uncomfortable with their hallucinations. WCST performances were significantly decreased in hallucinating patients than non-hallucinating patients, especially on total error (35.2±7.6 vs 25.3± 10.0), perseverative error (54.8± 14.9 vs 38.5± 13.0). In CPT, hallucinating patients showed more error response (11.9±8.1 vs 8.9±7.5) and more prolonged reaction time to incorrect answers (552.4 ±433.2 ms vs 492.7±358.5 ms).
Conclusion : Integrating these observations, it can be said that schizophrenic patients with treatment-resistant auditory hallucination have more neurocogntive functional deficits implying frontal lobe dysfunction than non-hallucinating schizophrenic patients. (J Korean Neuropsychiatr Assoc 2004;43 (3):288-2,95)
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