Neuropsychological and eye movement abnormalities in first-episode and chronic schizophrenia.

It is well known that neurobehavioral deficits are associated with schizophrenia. Little is known, however, about whether these disturbances becomes more severe over the course of the illness. In the present study, 101 patients with schizophrenia, of whom 45 were first-episode cases, performed pursuit eye tracking tasks. A subset of 60 of these patients, including 27 first-episode cases, were administered a battery of neuropsychological tests. Patients with a history of prior psychotic episodes demonstrated more severe pursuit eye movement dysfunction than first-episode patients and more severe disturbances on neuropsychological tests sensitive to prefrontal and left temporal cortical dysfunction. Longitudinal studies of patients ascertained close to the point of illness onset are needed to determine whether these findings reflect a progressive deterioration in neurobehavioral functioning over the course of schizophrenia.