Schizophrenia 2

Question 1

Neuropathology

Answer 1

Smaller cortex
Smaller hippocampus
Temporal lobes degeneration
Large ventricles

Question 2

Grey matter loss

Answer 2

Up to 5% annually
Parietal, motor, and temporal cortices

Question 3

Eye tracking

Answer 3

Patients with schizophrenia have difficulty making smooth eye movements

Question 4

Pre-pulse inhibition

Answer 4

A stimulus e.g. a noise produces a startle response
A weaker stimulus (pre-pulse) is given before
the strong stimulus now elicits a smaller response
this is impaired in schizophrenia

Question 5

Wisconsin card sorting task

Answer 5

Impaired in people with schizophrenia and patients with frontal lobe damage

Question 6

Theory of mind

Answer 6

Distorted in schizophrenia
Sometimes exaggerated- think objects have minds

Question 7

Biases

Answer 7

Cognitive bias- over report confrontational interactions
Attentional biases- over attend to negative stimuli
Reasoning biases- jumping to conclusions
Interpretational biases- hearing voices

Question 8

Seligman’s attributional model

Answer 8

Internal (due to us) vs external (due to something else)

Global (going to be the case for everything vs specific (a certain situation)

Stable (always going to happen) vs unstable

In depression people interprite negative events as interval global and stable

if negative events are interpreted as external, global and stable this could lead to delusions

Question 9

The family in schizophrenia

Answer 9

Double blind and paradoxical communication
Verbal messages contradict the implied message therefore invalidating both

Question 10

Socioeconomic status

Answer 10

Low SES is associated with schizophrenia
Social drift hypothesis- those with schizophrenia have difficulty with employment and drift to lower SES
Sociogenic hypothesis- if you have a lower SES, you more stressful live events