Biomedical subjects

Colleen A Brenner

Publications and source records attributed to Colleen A Brenner.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

Personality traits in schizophrenia and related personality disorders.

We investigated whether schizophrenia spectrum disorders share common personality characteristics or traits. Participants with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (SZ) or with a schizophrenia spectrum personality disorder (schizophrenia spectrum PD: schizoid, paranoid, and schizotypal personality disorder) were compared with non-psychiatric control subjects on the five-factor model of personality and the psychosis-proneness scales. On the five-factor personality scales, SZ subjects showed higher levels of neuroticism, and lower levels of openness, agreeableness, extraversion, and conscientiousness than control subjects. Higher scores on openness and lower scores on neuroticism distinguished schizophrenia spectrum PD from SZ. On the psychosis-proneness scales, both PD and SZ participants scored high relative to non-psychiatric control participants on magical ideation and perceptual aberration, while PD participants scored intermediate between non-psychiatric control participants and SZ on social anhedonia. Discriminant analysis indicated that schizophrenia spectrum patients could be distinguished from PDs by more severe social withdrawal and maladjustment, while subjects with PDs could be best distinguished from control subjects on the basis of odd or novel ideation and decreased conscientiousness.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

P50 and acoustic startle gating are not related in healthy participants.

Although P50 event-related potential (ERP) suppression and acoustic startle prepulse inhibition are conceptualized as measures of sensory and sensorimotor gating, respectively, the relationship between these measures is unclear. In the present study, P50 and prepulse inhibition trials were interleaved in a single testing session to determine their relationship. Thirty-one healthy participants were presented with startle- and P50-eliciting stimuli across six trial blocks. Lead stimuli (i.e., the prepulse to the acoustic startle and the first click in the dual click ERP paradigm) resulted in significant gating, or amplitude attenuation, of responses to the startle probe and second paired click. There were no meaningful correlations between the P50 and prepulse inhibition variables, indicating that P50 suppression and acoustic startle prepulse inhibition measure distinct neural mechanisms. The implications of these findings for operationally defining the psychological construct of gating with these psychophysiological measures are discussed.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

PubMed2003

Personality dimensions in schizophrenia: associations with symptoms and coping.

While individual differences in personality exist among persons with schizophrenia and predate the onset of illness, less is known about their relationship to outcome. This study examined whether levels of three personality dimensions-neuroticism, extraversion, and agreeableness-are associated with symptomatology and coping in persons with schizophrenia. Symptom, personality, and coping measures were obtained for 59 participants with schizophrenia. Personality and coping measures were obtained for 17 persons in a community comparison group. Relative to the community comparison groups, participants with schizophrenia had higher levels of neuroticism, lower levels of extraversion and agreeableness, and tended to employ more avoidant styles of coping. Participants with schizophrenia who had higher levels of neuroticism had greater positive and emotional discomfort symptoms and greater preferences for avoidant coping strategies. Participants with schizophrenia who had higher levels of agreeableness had lower levels of positive and excitement symptoms. No links were found between extraversion and outcome measures. Implications for understanding how personality may affect outcome are discussed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed2003

EEG synchronization to modulated auditory tones in schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and schizotypal personality disorder.

OBJECTIVE: The authors tested whether neural synchronization deficits were present in subjects with schizophrenia and schizotypal personality disorder. METHOD: Amplitude-modulated tones were used to evaluate auditory steady-state evoked potential entrainment in a combined group of 21 subjects with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, 11 subjects with schizotypal personality disorder, and 22 nonpsychiatric comparison subjects. RESULTS: The schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder group exhibited decreased power compared to the schizotypal personality disorder and nonpsychiatric comparison groups. There were no differences between groups in N100 amplitude. CONCLUSIONS: Subjects with schizophrenia but not subjects with schizotypal personality disorder have deficits in steady-state responses to periodic stimuli, despite an intact response to sensory-evoked potentials (N100). These deficits reflect aberrant neural synchronization or resolution and may contribute to disturbed perceptual and cognitive integration in schizophrenia.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

PubMed2003

Psychometrically matched visual-processing tasks in schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

Patients with schizophrenia show deficits in visual perception and working memory, but the relationship between these deficits has not been characterized with psychometrically matched tasks. The authors administered 2 visual discrimination and 6 recognition tasks to 43 schizophrenia spectrum patients and 22 nonpsychiatric subjects. When performing difficulty-matched tasks, spectrum subjects showed more severe impairments for motion compared with form processing. When tasks were matched on true score variance, spectrum subjects exhibited worse performance on both form and motion discrimination, and a differential deficit in motion recognition with a short display duration and long interstimulus interval. These results provide evidence of differential deficits in visual processing in schizophrenia that appear to be dependent on the temporal characteristics of the tasks.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Visual processing and neuropsychological function in schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder.

Persons with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder exhibit deficits in both visual processing and neuropsychological tasks. Little is known, however, about whether these deficits are related to one another. We administered psychophysical tests of visual discrimination and recognition, and neuropsychological tests of abstract flexibility, verbal learning, visual memory, working memory and attention to 42 outpatients with stable but chronic schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. Multiple regression analyses were performed to determine the relationship between these measures of neuropsychological function and visual psychophysical performance. Results indicated that motion perception was associated with working memory, and that the addition of a memory component to motion perception (motion recognition) was associated with both working memory and visual memory. Visual performance was not associated with symptom severity as measured by the PANSS. These results suggest that psychophysical tests of visual processing may contribute to deficits on neuropsychological tests of visual cognition, and may also reflect cross-modal disturbances of working memory function.

Adult↗