Relationship between cerebellar impairments and lexicon retrieval in schizophrenia – preliminary study

Aim of the study. Investigation of relationship between cerebellar motor dysfunctions and language impairments connected with cerebellum during phonological and semantic fluency tasks and verb generationtask in schizophrenic patients and healthy control group. Subject or material and methods. 14 schizophrenic patients on olanzapine, clozapine or quetiapine treatment and 13 healthy volunteers were examined. Motor signs were assessed by using the International Co-operative Ataxia Rating Scale (ICARS). Phonological and semantic fluency tasks were performed. All of the words were recorded and counted.Results. Patients with schizophrenia revealed significantly higher ICARS mean score (12.21) than control group (3.92), and lower number of proper generated words in semantic fluency and verb generation tasks. Strong negative correlation (rs(13) = -0.71, p<0.01) was found between ICARS total score and number of proper answers in verb generation task.Discussion. Higher number of total ICARS score in schizophrenia patients in comparison to control group may suggest cerebellar impairments. There is disproportion between semantic and phonological fluency. Significant correlation between verb generation and cerebellar signs supports a hypothesis of cerebellum dysfunction during this task in schizophrenia patients.Conclusions. Schizophrenic patients reveal impairments which may be connected with the cerebellum.