Previous studies have found that patients with chronic schizophrenia have a defect in their prospective function, but whether there is a defect in the prospective function of patients with first-episode schizophrenia still needs to be investigated. A few days ago, Chen Chuqiao, a researcher at the Neuropsychology and Applied Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory of the Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his collaborators discussed the prospective function of patients with first-episode schizophrenia. The relevant research results were published online in the journal Schizophrenia .
Prospective function refers to the ability of individuals to imagine future scenes and experience future emotions in advance, which is closely related to planning the future and seeking pleasant experiences. Therefore, impairment of forward-looking function may make people’s future planning and decision-making imperfect, and may reduce people’s anticipatory pleasant experience and motivation level.
“When people imagine themselves on a beach vacation, they will experience in advance the relaxation and pleasure of walking on the beach. These imagined content and feelings will affect people’s decision-making and planning of whether to go on vacation, and also make people experience anticipation. Pleasant feeling, and make individuals have higher motivation to start travel plans.” Chen Chuqiao described a specific scenario where the forward-looking function works to the reporter of Science and Technology Daily.
In this study, the researchers found 30 subjects with first-episode schizophrenia and 31 healthy control subjects. All subjects were required to complete a behavioral task with high reliability and validity. “In this task, the subjects need to watch the picture and imagine a future event according to the content of the picture. After the imagination is completed, the subjects not only need to explain the imagined event, but also need to evaluate some indicators related to the imagined content. “Chen Chuqiao said.
The study showed that the prospective content of first-episode schizophrenic patients was less specific and included fewer thoughts and emotions than controls. This suggests that people with first-episode schizophrenia are less likely to incorporate their own thoughts and emotions when imagining the future than normal people. “In other words, this study found that the events imagined by first-episode schizophrenic patients were less specific to a specific event than in controls. Furthermore, the content of imaginings by first-episode schizophrenic patients involved less thought-related , emotion-related information.” Chen Chuqiao said.
On the basis of previous related studies, this study expanded the performance of prospective function in patients with schizophrenia from patients with chronic schizophrenia to patients with first-episode schizophrenia.
“If we can further find that the high-risk group of schizophrenia also has a defect in prospective function, then we can reasonably speculate that the defect in prospective function may be one of the characteristic markers of schizophrenia, which will help schizophrenia. Early diagnosis and treatment.” Chen Chuqiao said.
The research team stated that future research can continue to expand the sample size to support the research conclusions, and can further explore issues related to the prospective function of patients with schizophrenia.
