Time perception disorders are related to working memory impairment in schizophrenia

Time perception (TP) impairment in schizophrenia has been originally described by clinicians and afterwards addressed in laboratory. Previous studies generally observed that schizophrenia patients overestimate time and that their timing sensitivity is impaired. However, because of the disease cognitive impairments, no study until now allows to draw definitive conclusions about the nature of TP disturbances. The aim of this study is to isolate a genuine TP disorder in schizophrenia, i.e., a disorder that would be related to the functioning of an internal clock. The main hypothesis tested is that patients' internal clock runs faster than that of healthy controls. Twenty-five patients suffering from a first-episode of schizophrenia and twenty-five healthy controls performed an innovative task called method of dynamic stimuli, designed to measure the natural frequency (F-n) of the internal clock, concomitant with a neuropsychological assessment. We observed no significant difference in F-n between groups. Compared to controls, there was a marginally higher variability in time reproduction in patients. Patients' pattern of results and significant correlations between TP tasks and memory outcomes suggest that TP impairments are related to memory impairment in schizophrenia. These conclusions are supported by a growing literature showing that cognition is involved in TP in schizophrenia. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

精神分裂症中的时间感知（TP）受损最初由临床医生描述，之后在实验室中进行研究。先前的研究普遍观察到精神分裂症患者会高估时间，且他们的计时敏感性受损。然而，由于该疾病存在认知障碍，到目前为止，没有研究能够就时间感知紊乱的本质得出明确结论。本研究的目的是分离出精神分裂症中真正的时间感知障碍，即一种与内部时钟运作相关的障碍。所检验的主要假设是患者的内部时钟比健康对照组运行得更快。25名首发精神分裂症患者和25名健康对照组完成了一项名为动态刺激法的创新任务，该任务旨在测量内部时钟的固有频率（F - n），同时进行神经心理学评估。我们观察到两组之间的F - n没有显著差异。与对照组相比，患者在时间再现方面的变异性略高。患者的结果模式以及时间感知任务和记忆结果之间的显著相关性表明，在精神分裂症中时间感知受损与记忆受损有关。这些结论得到了越来越多文献的支持，这些文献表明在精神分裂症中认知与时间感知有关。（c）2012爱思唯尔爱尔兰有限公司。保留所有权利。