Origins and Clinical Picture of Schizophrenia Flashcards

These flashcards provide vocabulary terms and definitions regarding the origins, clinical symptoms, genetic factors, and treatments of schizophrenia based on lecture transcript details.

John Haslam

The apothecary at the Bethlem Hospital in London who offered the first detailed clinical description of what is now recognized as schizophrenia in $1810$.

Benedict Morel

The Belgian psychiatrist who in $1860$ used the term "démence précoce" ($\text{mental deterioration at an early age}$) to describe the condition.

Emil Kraepelin

A German psychiatrist ($1856$-$1926$) who used the Latin term "dementia praecox" to refer to a group of conditions that seemed to feature mental deterioration beginning early in life.

Eugen Bleuler

A Swiss psychiatrist ($1857$-$1939$) who introduced the diagnostic term "schizophrenia" in $1911$, deriving it from the Greek roots for "to split or crack" and "mind."

Psychosis

The hallmark of schizophrenia, characterized by a significant loss of contact with reality.

Clang associations

Incoherent spontaneous speech where sounds, rather than meaningful relationships, govern word choice, often marked by frequent rhyming.

Delusion

An erroneous belief that is fixed and firmly held despite clear contradictory evidence, involving a disturbance in the content of thought.

Thought broadcasting

A delusion in which the individual believes their private thoughts are being transmitted indiscriminately to others.

Thought insertion

A delusion in which the individual believes that thoughts are being inserted into their brain by some external agency.

Thought withdrawal

A delusion in which some external agency has robbed the individual of their thoughts.

Delusions of reference

A delusion where a neutral environmental event, such as a television program or a song, is believed to have special and personal meaning intended only for the person.

Hallucination

A sensory experience that seems real to the person having it but occurs in the absence of any external perceptual stimulus.

Broca's area

An area of the temporal lobe involved in speech production that shows increased activity in neuroimaging studies when patients are experiencing auditory hallucinations.

Neologisms

Completely new, made-up words that appear in the disorganized speech of a person with schizophrenia.

Formal thought disorder

A term clinicians use to refer to problems in the way that disorganized thought is expressed in disorganized speech.

Positive symptoms

Symptoms that reflect an excess or distortion in a normal repertoire of behavior and experience, such as delusions and hallucinations.

Negative symptoms

Symptoms that reflect an absence or deficit of behaviors that are normally present, such as blunted affect or loss of motivation.

Alogia

A negative symptom characterized by having very little speech.

Avolition

A negative symptom involving the inability to initiate or persist in goal-directed activity.

Anhedonia

A negative symptom characterized by a diminished ability to experience pleasure.

Catatonia

A behavioral disturbance involving a virtual absence of movement and speech ($\text{catatonic stupor}$) or holding an unusual posture for an extended period of time.

Schizoaffective disorder

A diagnostic category for people who have features of schizophrenia as well as marked changes in mood for a substantial amount of time.

Schizophreniform disorder

A category for schizophrenia-like psychoses that last at least $1$ month but less than $6$ months.

Delusional disorder

A disorder where individuals hold false and absurd beliefs but otherwise behave quite normally, without gross disorganization.

Brief psychotic disorder

A sudden onset of psychotic symptoms, disorganized speech, or catatonic behavior lasting at least $1$ day but less than $1$ month.

Monochorionic

A condition in which monozygotic embryos share a placenta and blood supply; these twins have much higher concordance rates for schizophrenia ($60\%$) than dichorionic twins.

Communication deviance

A measure of how understandable and "easy to follow" the speech of a family member is; vague and unclear communication reflects high deviance.

Genome-wide association study (GWAS)

A genetic approach where the entire genome is investigated to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms ($\text{SNPs}$) associated with a disorder.

Endophenotypes

Discrete, stable, and measurable traits, such as working memory or eye-tracking dysfunction, that are thought to be under genetic control.

P50 suppression

A measure of sensory gating where the brain dampens electrical responses to a second click; patients with schizophrenia often show poor suppression.

Social cognition

A domain concerned with how people recognize, think about, and respond to social information, including the emotions and intentions of others.

Aberrant salience

A hypothesis that dysregulated dopamine causes individuals to pay more attention to and assign more significance to irrelevant internal and external stimuli.

Expressed emotion (EE)

A measure of the family environment based on how a family member speaks about the patient, characterized by criticism, hostility, and emotional overinvolvement.

First-generation antipsychotics

Conventional neuroleptic medications like chlorpromazine ($\text{Thorazine}$) and haloperidol ($\text{Haldol}$) that block $D2$ dopamine receptors.

Extrapyramidal side effects (EPS)

Involuntary movement abnormalities like muscle spasms, rigidity, and shaking that resemble Parkinson's disease, associated with neuroleptic medications.

Tardive dyskinesia

A long-term side effect of neuroleptics involving marked involuntary movements of the lips, tongue, hands, and neck.

Second-generation antipsychotics

A newer class of drugs, such as clozapine and risperidone, that cause fewer extrapyramidal symptoms than earlier antipsychotics.

Cognitive remediation training

A treatment focused on helping patients improve neurocognitive deficits like verbal memory and vigilance using practice and compensatory techniques.

Social-skills training

A psychosocial intervention designed to help patients acquire the interpersonal, self-care, and vocational skills needed for daily functioning.