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Relationship between Movement Planning and Psychopathology Profiles in Schizophrenia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Ashok K. Malla ,
Ross M. G. Norman ,
Omar Aguilar ,
Heather Carnahan  and
Leonard Cortese
Ashok K. Malla*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Western Ontario, and Victoria Hospital, London, Ontario
Ross M. G. Norman
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Western Ontario
Omar Aguilar
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Western Ontario
Heather Carnahan
Affiliation:
Department of Kinesiology, University of Waterloo, Ontario
Leonard Cortese
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Western Ontario
*
Prof. A. K. Malla, Chief, Department of Psychiatry, Victoria Hospital, 375 South Street, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 4G5. Fax: (519) 6676539
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Abstract

Background

There has been evidence that psychopathology in schizophrenia consists of three separable syndromes: reality distortion, disorganisation, and psychomotor poverty. The objective of this study was to explore the relationship between planning and execution of movement and each of the syndromes in schizophrenia.

Method

Twenty-one right handed DSM–III–R schizophrenic patients performed a total of 80 trials of a motor movement task, varying distance of movement × size of the target × hand. Times taken to plan the movement (RT) and to carry it out (MT) were examined for their relationship with contemporaneous as well as lifetime profiles of the three syndromes in schizophrenia.

Results

Significant correlations are reported between RT and current as well as lifetime measures of disorganisation syndrome. Somewhat weaker correlations are reported between RT and psychomotor poverty, but only for the right-handed tasks. Partial correlations suggest that the influence of neuroleptic medication explains all but one of the correlations between psychomotor poverty and RT, but does not account for the relationship between disorganisation and RT. No other relationship emerged between any of the movement and symptom measures.

Conclusions

These findings indicate that dysfunction in movement planning is related primarily to concurrent disorganisation, as well as to the prominence of disorganisation over the patient's history.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 167 , Issue 2 , August 1995 , pp. 211 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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