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Background: Major depressive episode (MDE) has been associated with cognitive functioning alteration and hypovitaminosis D (hypoVD), but the relationship between hypoVD, depression, and cognition is not well understood. We aimed to compare patient with MDE with or without hypoVD in regard of cognitive functioning., Methods: 91 patients (38.5 years old, 65.9% female) with MDE were included in a cross-sectional study and were evaluated with a complete cognitive battery. None of the participants were medicated at the time of the inclusion. Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D was measured using LC-MS/MS method, and hypovitaminosis was defined as 25OHD < 50nmol/L. Covariates were gender, season of dosage, first MDE onset, age, body mass index and depression severity RESULTS: Patients with hypoVD demonstrated a higher stroop intereference index time underscoring that means low cognitive inhibition ability. Mutiple logistic regression confirmed that hypoVD was significantly associated with high stroop interference time index after controlling by gender, season of dosage, first MDE onset, age, body mass index and depression severity., Conclusion: Our results suggest that patient with MDE having hypoVD may be more prone to cognitive impairment., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: People who attempt suicide often display cognitive impairments, particularly poor cognitive control. Could poor cognitive control contribute to high suicide rates in old age? A component of cognitive control, cognitive inhibition-active suppression of task-irrelevant processing-is very sensitive to aging and has been linked to attempted suicide. We investigated cognitive inhibition in older high-lethality suicide attempters, closely resembling suicide victims, as well as low-lethality attempters, and control groups with and without depression and suicidal ideation., Methods: A total of 102 participants aged 60 years and older (17 psychiatrically healthy control subjects, 38 depressed control subjects, 16 suicide ideators, 14 low-lethality suicide attempters, and 17 high-lethality suicide attempters) underwent comprehensive clinical and cognitive assessments. They completed the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System Color-Word Interference Test, a validated modification of the Stroop test., Results: High-lethality suicide attempters demonstrated a distinct pattern of cognitive inhibition deficits. Compared with psychiatrically healthy control subjects and suicide ideators, high-lethality attempters took longer to complete inhibition trials, even after accounting for potential confounding factors (age, education, Mini mental state examination score, information processing speed, and accuracy). Compared with non-suicidal depressed and healthy control subjects, low-lethality suicide attempters committed more uncorrected errors; however, this difference was not specific to the inhibition condition., Conclusions: Older suicide attempters are a cognitively heterogeneous group. Poor cognitive control in high-lethality attempters may undermine their ability to solve real-life problems, precipitating a catastrophic accumulation of stressors. Meanwhile, low-lethality attempters' poor performance may reflect a careless approach to the task or faulty monitoring., (Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

Objectives: Suicidal behaviour results from a complex interplay between stressful events and vulnerability factors, including cognitive deficits. It is not yet clear if memory impairment is part of this specific vulnerability. Therefore, the objective of this study was to examine the association between memory deficits and vulnerability to suicidal acts., Methods: A literature review was performed using Medline, Embase, and PsycInfo databases. Twenty-four studies (including 2,595 participants) met the selection criteria. Four different types of memory (i.e., working memory, short- and long-term memory, and autobiographical memory) were assessed in at least three different studies., Results: Autobiographical memory was significantly less specific and more general in patients with a history of suicide attempt relative to those without such a history (Hedges' g = 0.8 and 0.9, respectively). Long-term memory and working memory were both more impaired in suicide attempters than in patient and healthy controls. Only short-term memory did not differentiate suicide attempters from patient controls., Conclusions: Memory may play a significant role in the risk of suicidal acts, perhaps by preventing these individuals from using past experiences to solve current problems and to envision the future, and by altering inhibitory processes. More studies are necessary to better clarify these relationships.

Objective: Schizophrenia is associated with an increase in the risk of both homicide and suicide. The objectives of this study were to systematically review all published articles that examined the relation between neurocognitive deficits and suicidal or homicidal behaviours in schizophrenia, and to identify vulnerabilities in suicidal and homicidal behaviour that may share a common pathway in schizophrenia., Methods: A systematic review of the literature was performed using MEDLINE to include all studies published up to August 31, 2012., Results: Among the 1760 studies, 7 neuropsychological and 12 brain imaging studies met the selection criteria and were included in the final analysis. The neuropsychological and functional neuroimaging studies were inconclusive. The structural imaging studies reported various alterations in patients with schizophrenia and a history of homicidal behaviour, including: reduced inferior frontal and temporal cortices, increased mediodorsal white matter, and increased amygdala volumes. Patients with a history of suicidal acts showed volumetric reductions in left orbitofrontal and superior temporal cortices, while right amygdala volume was increased, though, these findings have rarely been replicated. Finally, no study has directly compared neurocognitive markers of suicidal and homicidal risk., Conclusion: These results suggest that brain alterations, in addition to those associated with schizophrenia, may predispose some patients to a higher risk of homicide or suicide in particular circumstances. Moreover, some of these alterations may be shared between homicidal and suicidal patients. However, owing to several limitations, including the small number of available studies, no firm conclusions can be drawn and further investigations are necessary.

Objective: a comprehensive literature review suggests that suicidal behaviour results from a complex interplay between stressful events and vulnerability factors including cognitive deficits. The aim of this systematic literature review was to identify the neurocognitive markers associated with suicide vulnerability in elderly people., Method: a systematic English Medline literature search of cohort studies, case-control studies and cross-sectional studies published between January 1960 and December 2012 was performed, combining the MeSH terms "Suicide", "Neuropsychology", "Neuropsychological Tests", "Executive Function", "Magnetic Resonance Imaging", "Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging", "Positron-Emission Tomography", "Prefrontal Cortex", "Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon", and "Diffusion Tensor Imaging". The abstract selection was based on the Strobe checklist for observational studies., Results: of the 446 original articles, 10 neuropsychological and 4 brain imaging studies were selected. The number of suicidal subjects ranged from 10 to 29 (mean age=66.8 to 79.1 years old, 0-85% women). Executive functions, in particular decision-making and cognitive inhibition, were more impaired in the depressed elderly with a history of suicide attempts compared to those without such a history. fMRI data, which need to be confirmed in further details, showed abnormalities of fronto-limbic circuits which are involved in suicide vulnerability in the elderly independently of any associated psychopathological conditions including depression., Conclusion: this literature review confirms the existence of neurocognitive markers of suicide vulnerability in elderly people. A neuropsychological assessment could thus help to identify the suicide vulnerability of a depressed elderly person, a first step for both pharmacological and psychotherapeutic cares.

Objective: To compare cognitive inhibition performance between people with early-onset (EOD) or late-onset depression (LOD) and controls, and between women and men with LOD., Methods: On the basis of a case-control design, global executive performance (Frontal Assessment Battery); verbal (Hayling), attention (Stroop), and motor (Go/No-Go) components of cognitive inhibition; mental shifting (Trail Making Test parts A and B); and updating in working memory (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale) were assessed in 40 participants (10 depressed women with LOD (i.e., ≥60 years old), 10 depressed women with EOD (i.e., <60 years old), 10 healthy women and 10 depressed men with LOD (i.e., ≥60 years old))., Results: Older depressed women, irrespective of age of depression onset, had greater cognitive inhibition impairments (attention and verbal component) compared with healthy women. LOD was significantly associated with the attention component of cognitive inhibition impairment, unlike EOD (p = 0.026). No executive differences were found regarding age of first-onset depression in older depressed women, and between women and men with LOD., Conclusion: Cognitive inhibition impairment, and more specifically its attention component, was the main characteristic of depression in the studied sample of older adults, independently of gender and age of depression onset. It is essential to perform similar studies in both genders in view of future tailor-made therapeutic modalities., (Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

Aim: To compare cognitive inhibition and quality of life in patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls., Methods: Ten patients with schizophrenia were compared to 10 healthy controls, matched for age, sex, and educational level. Cognitive inhibition was examined by: 1) access to relevant information (Reading with distraction task), 2) suppression of no longer relevant information (Trail Making Test), and 3) restraint of cognitive resources to relevant information (Stroop Test, Hayling Sentence Completion Test, Go/No-Go Test). Montgomery Asberg Depression Rating Scale, Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale, and Schizophrenia-Quality of Life scale (S-QoL) were also used., Results: Patients with schizophrenia showed a significant impairment in the suppression function of cognitive inhibition only, in comparison to the control group. Their access and restraint functions of cognitive inhibition were preserved. No relationship between quality of life and cognitive inhibition was found in patients with schizophrenia., Conclusions: During the stabilization phase of schizophrenia, the ability to inhibit neutral information access to working memory, and to restrain and suppress irrelevant information may not impair the patient's capacity to respond adequately to stressful situations, and thus would do not impact their quality of life., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: Cognitive deficits, in relation to ventral and dorsal prefrontal cortex dysfunctions, have been associated with a higher risk of suicidal acts in young adult patients. Although a public health concern, much less is known about the neurocognitive basis of suicidal behavior in elderly. Here, we aimed at assessing alterations in cognitive inhibition, a suspected major mechanism of the suicidal vulnerability, in suicidal depressed elderly., Methods: We compared 20 currently depressed patients, aged 65 and older who recently attempted suicide to 20 elderly subjects with a current depression but no personal history of suicide attempt and 20 elderly controls. Using an extensive neuropsychological battery, we particularly examined different aspects of cognitive inhibition: access to relevant information (using the Reading with distraction task), suppression of no longer relevant information (Trail Making Test, Rule Shift Cards), and restraint of cognitive resources to relevant information (Stroop test, Hayling Sentence Completion test, Go/No-Go)., Results: After adjustment for age, intensity of depression, Mini-Mental State Examination score and speed of information processing, suicidal depressed elderly showed significant impairments in all 3 domains of cognitive inhibition in comparison to both control groups., Limitations: Our results need replication in a larger sample size., Conclusions: Our study suggests that the inability to inhibit neutral information access to working memory, restrain and delete irrelevant information may impair the patient's capacity to respond adequately to stressful situations subsequently leading to an increased risk of suicidal behavior during late-life depression. Interventions may be developed to specifically target cognitive impairment in the prevention of suicide in depressed elderly., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background Suicidal behavior results from a complex interplay between stressful events and vulnerability factors, including neurocognitive alterations. Deficits in cognitive inhibition have previously been found in suicide attempters. Here, we examined the neural basis of these deficits in patients at-risk for suicide. Methods Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to measure brain activation in 25 middle-aged depressed yet non-medicated suicide attempters (SA), 22 depressed patient controls with no personal or first-degree family history of suicidal behaviour (PC), and 27 healthy controls (HC) during the Go/No-Go response inhibition task. Results In whole brain exploration of No-Go versus Go inhibition contrast, SA show elevated activities in posterior cingulate gyrus compared to HC (Cluster FWE = 0.022). Further exploration of each individual condition against baseline (e.g. No-Go versus Baseline or Go versus Baseline) suggest this regional differences are mainly due to No-Go baseline comparison within each groups: namely, HC show a large reduced activities during No-Go blocks while PC and SA failed to show similar reductions comparing to baseline. Conclusion SA showed unique differentiated patterns of neural activity during Go-No-Go response inhibition differ from HC and PC mostly involving posterior cingulate gyrus. These findings indicate that suicide attempts during middle-aged are associated with abnormal activity in response inhibition neural circuitry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: To establish the social, clinical and forensic differences between murderers with schizophrenia and murderers without any psychiatric disorder and to compare their respective relationship with their victim. Method: We identified the socio-demographic, clinical and criminological profiles of 14 murderers with schizophrenia from 210 forensic examinations of murderers, and compared their profiles with those of murderers without any mental disorder (n=73). Results: Murderers with schizophrenia are characterized by a specific socio-professional status (single, living alone and jobless). Previous psychiatric history was significantly more common in the schizophrenia group than in the group of persons without mental disorder, as it was the case as regards previous contact with the police. Schizophrenic murderers generally commit, alone, a non-premeditated murder. They usually strangle their victim in a sudden attack, whereas murderers without any pathology usually premeditate their crime. 86% of perpetrators with schizophrenia have been in a delirium at the time they committed murder, among four main themes: persecution, thought insertion, mysticism and megalomania. Victims of murderers with schizophrenia were family members in 21% of cases, acquaintances in 57% and a stranger in 14%. The victim was known to the perpetrator significantly more often in the schizophrenia group than in the no mental disorder group (86% versus 77%, p=0,002). Conclusion: The main difference between murderers with schizophrenia and murderers without any mental disorder is the psychopathology of the morbid process which underlies the homicide. The most schizophrenics’ homicide was more likely to be against intimates than strangers. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]