Neurocognitive deficits in schizophrenia. Are we making mountains out of molehills?

CONCLUSIONS:

The data argue that performance on measures of neurocognition in schizophrenia are to a considerable extent due to secondary factors. Poor motivation, fears and momentary impairments distinguished patients from controls and these variables heavily impacted performance. Before concluding that neurocognitive deficits in psychiatric patients are present, clinicians should take these confounding influences into account. Although patients with schizophrenia achieved, on average, worse test scores than controls, a large subgroup displayed spared performance.

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What’s your take on this, @Erez_Shmerling ?? You have been plagued by cognitive issues, so tell us: is this article bogus or does it make a good point?

As for myself, I acknowledge bad motivation as a confounding influence, but my cognition per se should be largely preserved.

A DISGRACEFUL article!!!
I suffer from SEVERE cognitive deficits!!!

@firemonkey please DELETE this article!
How can they publish such an abomination?
I have VERY SEVERE cognitive impairment.
This article is disgusting.

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@Andrey @Erez_Shmerling They are not saying cognitive impairment does not exist but that when the factors mentioned are accounted for the degree of impairment is smaller.

I am not going to delete the article or ask for it to be deleted. Deleting a news article because someone disagrees with the findings would be wrong IMO . If you have problems with it then by all means contact @SzAdmin or a moderator

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@firemonkey I think that this is very individualized.
There are individuals, that their impairment is relatively mild.
There are people with very severe impairment who desperately need help.
I will tell you what’s the problem.
If you belittle the problem like these dastardly researchers did, it decresases the motivation
of people who can help the people who suffer from severe cognitive impairment to help them.
Further, the people who participate in cognitive tests are BY NO MEANS a representative sample
of schizophrenia patients.The people who participate tend to be people whose cognition
is relatively well preserved.

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No one is belittling the problem. They are just offering up factors that have a bearing on the level of cognitive impairment.

Just to throw fuel onto the fire of debate I would ask does cognitive impairment lead to low motivation or does low motivation lead to cognitive impairment ?

Whilst not denying that some or most of us here may have some degree of cognitive impairment I would say objectively, by nature of being able to participate here, it is not really severe. How we may feel subjectively about it is another matter.

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We need constant live streaming news and headlines keeping us updated on the latestcschozophrenia treatments. Anything short of that would be cheating

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I and others who post articles in the new section can only do what we do. That is considerably more than you can be bothered to do. To suggest there is any kind of cheating going on is both offensive and ridiculous.

If you want constant live streaming news then I suggest you talk with @SzAdmin as to how best to achieve that.

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Think about it. A ticker tape like the stocks have but for schixophreniscrelsted topics. Over and over and over again.

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It would be grand! And then we would be able to click on the topic we like and read all of the most recent articles.
It would be like my dream come true.
@firemonkey can you make this possible?

@firemonkey there is a big difference between writing research books in mathematics and participating here,
if you get what I mean.

That wasn’t very nice of a thing to say smto someone either.

Simple answer- no. I don’t have anything near the technical skills. You would be best discussing this with @SzAdmin.

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If you are setting that up as a criteria for adequate/good cognitive functioning you are setting an impossibly high barrier for most people; be they severely mentally ill or not.

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I’m not sure why you are picking on me @firemonkey.
Did I do something to upset you?

@firemonkey I was referring to myself and not the general public.
By the way I haven’t given up on that!
So don’t write me off just yet.

I am not picking on you. I merely admitted to not having the technical skills to set up a ticker tape.

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You are still setting up a high barrier for adequate/good cognitive functioning. Alternatively we might say your claim of being severely cognitively impaired is faulty based on the criteria you use to define that.

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@firemonkey you have no right to tell me what my cognition should be!
My parents are both highly intelligent, my father is a mathematics researcher, I don’t see how I am exaggerating.

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