Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-fqc5m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T10:22:44.070Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Towards a Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Christopher D. Frith*
Affiliation:
CRC Division of Psychiatry, Watford Road, Harrow HA1 3UJ
D. John Done
Affiliation:
CRC Division of Psychiatry, Watford Road, Harrow HA1 3UJ
*
Correspondence

Abstract

A viable neuropsychology of schizophrenia requires, first, that signs and symptoms be understood in terms of underlying psychological processes and, second, that these underlying processes be related to brain systems. We propose that the negative signs of schizophrenia reflect a defect in the initiation of spontaneous action, while the positive symptoms reflect a defect in the internal monitoring of action. The spontaneous initiation of action depends upon brain systems linking the prefrontal cortex and the basal ganglia. Internal monitoring, carried out in the hippocampus, of spontaneous action, depends upon links between the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus via the parahippocampal cortex and the cingulate cortex.

Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1988 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Extended version of a lecture given at a Royal College of Psychiatrists' meeting in January 1987, as part of the Maudsley Bequest series.

References

Benes, F. M. & Bird, D. (1987) An analysis of the arrangement of neurons in the cingulate cortex of schizophrenic patients. Archives of General Psychiatry, 44, 608616.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Braff, D. L., Callaway, E. & Naylor, H. (1977) Very short-term memory dysfunction in schizophrenia. Archives of General Psychiatry, 34, 2530.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brindley, G. & Merton, P. A. (1960) The absence of position sense in the human eye. Journal of Physiology, 153, 127130.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Broadbent, D. E. (1958) Perception and Communication. London: Pergamon.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, R., Colter, N., Corsellis, J. A. N., Crow, T. J., Frith, C. D., Jagoe, R., Johnstone, E. C. & Marsh, L. (1986) Postmortem evidence of structural brain changes in schizophrenia. Archives of General Psychiatry, 43, 3642.Google Scholar
Cohen, B. D. (1978) Referent communication disturbances in schizophrenia In Language and Cognition in Schizophrenia (ed. Schwartz, S.), pp. 134. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Crawley, J. C. W., Crow, T. J., Johnstone, E. C., Oldland, S. R. D., Owen, F., Owens, D. G. C., Smith, T., Veall, N. & Zanelli, G. D. (1986) Uptake of 77Br-spiperone in the striata of schizophrenic patients and controls. Nuclear Medicine Communications, 7, 599607.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crichton-Brown, J. (1879) On the weight of the brain and its component parts in the insane. Brain, 2, 4267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crow, T. J. (1980) Molecular pathology of schizophrenia. More than one dimension of pathology? British Medical Journal, 280, 6668.Google Scholar
Crow, T. J. (1986) Left brain, retrotransposons, and schizophrenia. British Medical Journal, 293, 34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crown, S. (1952) An experimental study of psychological changes following prefrontal lobotomy. Journal of General Psychology, 47, 341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denny-Brown, D. (1968) Clinical symptomatology of diseases of the basal ganglia In Handbook of Clinical Neurology (eds Vinken, P. J. & Bruyn, G. W.) vol. 6, p. 136. Amsterdam: North Holland.Google Scholar
Done, D. J. & Frith, C. D. (1984) The effect of context during word perception in schizophrenia. Brain and Language, 23, 318336.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feinberg, I. (1978) Efference copy and corollary discharge: implications for thinking and its disorders. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 4, 636640.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Flowers, K. A. & Robertson, C. (1985) The effect of Parkinson's disease on the ability to maintain a mental set. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, 48, 517529.Google Scholar
Frith, C. D. (1979) Consciousness, information processing and schizophrenia. British Journal of Psychiatry, 134, 225235.Google Scholar
Frith, C. D. (1987) The positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia reflect impairments in the perception and initiation of action. Psychological Medicine, 17, 631648.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fuster, J. M. (1980) The Prefrontal Cortex. Raven: New York.Google Scholar
Gaffan, D. (1983) Animal amnesia: some disconnection syndromes In Neurobiology of the Hippocampus (ed. Seifert, W.). London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, G. (1985) Supplementary motor area structure and function: review and hypotheses. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 8, 567616.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gray, J. A. (1982) The Neuropsychology of Anxiety. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Green, P. & Preston, M. (1981) Reinforcement of vocal correlates of auditory hallucinations by auditory feedback. British Journal of Psychiatry, 139, 204208.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
von Helmholtz, H. (1866) Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik. Leipzig: Voss (English translation A Treatise on Physiological Optics, vol. 3. New York: Dover).Google Scholar
Hemsley, D. R. (1975) A two-stage model of attention in schizophrenia. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 14, 8189.Google Scholar
Hoffman, R. E. (1986) Verbal hallucinations and language production processes in schizophrenia. Behavioural Brain Sciences, 9, 503548.Google Scholar
Johnstone, E. C., Crow, T. J., Frith, C. D., Husband, J. & Kreel, L. (1976) Cerebral ventricular size and cognitive impairment in chronic schizophrenia. The Lancet, ii, 924926.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luria, A. R. (1983) The Working Brain pp. 197210. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Malenka, R. C., Angel, R. W., Hampton, B. & Berger, P. A. (1982) Impaired central error correcting behaviour in schizophrenia. Archives of General Psychiatry, 39, 101107.Google Scholar
Mellor, C. S. (1970) First rank symptoms of schizophrenia. British Journal of Psychiatry, 117, 1523.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Milner, B. & Petrides, M. (1984) Behavioural effects of frontal lobe lesions in man. Trends in the Neurosciences, 7, 402407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Keefe, J. & Nadel, L. (1978) The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Olton, D. S. (1983) Memory functions and the hippocampus In Neurobiology of the Hippocampus (ed. Seifert, W.), pp. 365374. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Pandya, D. N., Dye, P. & Butters, N. (1971) Efferent cortico – cortical projections of the prefrontal cortex of the rhesus monkey. Brain Research, 31, 3536.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Passingham, R. E. (1987) Two cortical systems for directing movement In Motor Areas of the Cerebral Cortex, pp. 151161. Wiley: Chichester (Ciba Foundation Symposium 132).Google Scholar
Piaget, J. (1954) Le language et la pensee du point de genetique. Acta Psychologica, 10, 12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Porteus, S. D. & Kepner, D. M. (1944) Mental changes after bilateral prefrontal lobotomy. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 29, 4.Google Scholar
Powell, G. E. (1979) Brain and Personality. London: Saxon House.Google Scholar
Rabbitt, P. M. A. (1966) Error-correction time without external signals. Nature, 212, 438.Google Scholar
Rawlins, J. N. P. (1985) Associations across time: the hippocampus as a temporary memory store. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 8, 470496.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reason, J. T. (1979) Actions not as planned: the price of automatisation In Aspects of Consciousness, vol. I. Psychological Issues (eds Underwood, G. & Stevens, R.), pp. 6790. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Shafer, E. W. P. & Marcus, M. M. (1973) Self-stimulation alters human sensory brain responses. Science, 181, 175177.Google Scholar
Shallice, T. (1982) Specific impairments of planning. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B, 298, 199209.Google ScholarPubMed
Sokolov, A. N. (1972) Inner speech and thought. Plenum: New York.Google Scholar
Sperry, R. W. (1950) Neural basis of the spontaneous optokinetic response produced by visual inversion. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 43, 482489.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tow, P. M. & Whitty, C. W. M. (1953) Personality changes after operations on the cingulate gyrus in man. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, 16, 186193.Google Scholar
Van Hoesen, G. W. & Pandya, D. N. (1975) Some connections of the entorhinal (area 28) and perirhinal (area 35) cortices of the Rhesus monkey. I. Temporal lobe afferents. Brain Research, 95, 124.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van Hoesen, G. W., Pandya, D. N. & Butters, N. (1972) Cortical afferents to the entorhinal cortex of the rhesus monkey. Science, 175, 14711473.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Hoesen, G. W., Pandya, D. N. & Butters, N. (1975). Some connections of the entorhinal (area 28) and perirhinal (area 35) cortices of the rhesus monkey. II. Frontal lobe afferents. Brain Research, 95, 2538.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Venables, P. H. (1964) Input dysfunction in schizophrenia In Contributions to the Psychopathology of Schizophrenia (ed. Maher, B. A.). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Vinogradova, O. S. (1975) Functional organisation of the limbic system in the process of registration of information In The Hippocampus, vol. 2. Neurophysiology and Behavior (eds Isaacson, R. L. & Pribram, K. H.), pp. 170. New York: Plenum Press.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.