Does sex influence the relation between symptoms and neurocognitive functions in schizophrenia?

A secondary analysis of our data to investigate if sex influences the specificity of the relationship between each of the 3 clinical syndromes (i.e., reality distortion, disorganization and psychomotor poverty) in schizophrenia and the neurocognitive functions that are thought to represent regional brain functions.

Fifty-seven male and 30 female patients with a DSM-III-R diagnosis of schizophrenia were rated on the Scale for Assessment of Negative Symptoms and the Scale for Assessment of Positive Symptoms to derive scores for psychomotor poverty, disorganization, and reality distortion syndromes. All subjects completed a battery of neuropsychological tests purported to assess functioning of left temporal, right temporal, left basal frontal, right basal frontal, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

Correlation coefficients between syndrome scores and neuropsychological measures showed only word fluency (left frontal functioning) to have a statistically significant association with psychomotor poverty in women (p < 0.01). This relation was specific to psychomotor poverty syndrome. No relations between neurocognitive measures and symptoms were seen in men.

The lack of specific relations between symptom dimensions in schizophrenia may be influenced by the fact that the neuronal circuitry associated with particular symptom dimensions may differ in men and women.