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Odor identification, eye tracking and deficit syndrome schizophrenia
Dolores Malaspina1, Eliza Coleman, Raymond R Goetz
1New York State Psychiatric Institute, Columbia University Department of Psychiatry, 1051 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10032, USA.
Biological Psychiatry
|May 15, 2002
Summary
Schizophrenia patients with deficit syndrome show impaired smell identification and eye movement. These deficits may indicate a distinct subgroup and highlight the role of olfactory neural circuitry in social affiliation.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Psychiatry
- Olfactory research
Background:
- Deficit syndrome (DS) in schizophrenia is associated with smooth pursuit eye movement (SPEM) dysfunction.
- Social affiliation in mammals is linked to olfaction, prompting investigation into smell identification in DS patients.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate smell identification deficits in schizophrenia patients with deficit syndrome.
- To explore the relationship between olfactory function, SPEM, and DS in schizophrenia.
Main Methods:
- Sixty-seven schizophrenia patients underwent DS assessments.
- 31 patients had SPEM assessments, 50 had Smell Identification Test (SIT) assessments, and 14 had both.
- Receiver-operator characteristic (ROC) curves analyzed the accuracy of SIT and SPEM in identifying DS.
Main Results:
- DS patients exhibited poorer performance on both SPEM and SIT compared to non-DS patients.
- Both SIT and SPEM demonstrated fair accuracy in identifying DS patients.
- Impaired SPEM and microsmia (reduced sense of smell) were significantly associated with DS, with odds ratios of 6.21 and 10.4, respectively.
Conclusions:
- A strong association between DS and SIT scores suggests olfactory neural substrates are linked to social affiliation in humans.
- These findings support DS as a distinct, homogeneous subgroup of schizophrenia.
- Dysfunction in olfactory neural circuitry may contribute to the pathophysiology of deficit syndrome schizophrenia.