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This study tested association between anhedonia scores and white matter integrity in order to investigate the neural basis of trait anhedonia in schizophrenia. A total of 31 patients with schizophrenia and 33 healthy controls underwent diffusion weighted imaging and scoring of trait anhedonia using the Physical Anhedonia Scale. Using tract-based spatial statistics, we found that fractional anisotropy values of some white matter regions were differently correlated with Physical Anhedonia Scale scores between the two groups. The white matter regions that were more significantly correlated with trait anhedonia in patients than in controls included the left side of the cingulum, splenium of the corpus callosum, inferior longitudinal fasciculus, superior longitudinal fasciculus I and II, anterior thalamic radiation, and optic radiation. Of these regions, fractional anisotropy values in the cingulum and superior longitudinal fasciculus II were positively correlated with trait anhedonia in patients with schizophrenia. These findings suggest that alterations in structural connectivity within large-scale brain networks, including the default mode and central executive networks, may contribute to the development of trait anhedonia in patients with schizophrenia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: To date, cognitive flexibility has been measured only using neuropsychological tasks, and has not been tested using more ecologically valid task due to methodological limitations. In this study, a virtual reality task was developed to evaluate cognitive flexibility in a real life situation and performance on this task was compared between 30 healthy individuals and 30 schizophrenia patients. Compared to healthy controls, a greater number of schizophrenia patients made concrete decisions, and their decision-making times were negatively correlated with the severity of their negative symptoms. These findings indicate that virtual reality can be an ecologically valid measurement of cognitive flexibility. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Schizophrenia is a devastating mental illness and is characterized by hallucinations and delusions as well as social skills deficits. Generally, social skills training designed to help patients develop social skills includes role-playing, but this form of training has typical shortcomings, which are largely due to a trainer's difficulties to project emotion. Virtual reality (VR)–based techniques have the potential to solve these difficulties, because they provide a computer-generated but realistic three-dimensional world and humanlike avatars that can provide emotional stimuli. In this paper, we report on a method of implementing virtual environments (VEs) in order to train people with schizophrenia to develop conversational skills in specific situations, which could overcome the shortcomings of or complement conventional role-playing techniques. The paper reports the efficacy of the proposed approach in a preliminary clinical trial with 10 patients with schizophrenia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]