Research on schizophrenia based on dementia, working memory and episodic memory deficits

Schizophrenia is associated with severe cognitive dysfunctions, including memory deficits that affect both working memory (WM) and episodic memory (EM). Memory deficits are also a typical symptom experienced by dementia patients that causes crucial functional problems in daily life. Meanwhile, past studies yielded evidence for the relationship between dementia and psychiatric disorders, indicating the emergence of psychotic symptoms during prodromal dementia. This article aims to investigate the relationship between schizophrenia and dementia plus the WM and EM deficits among schizophrenia patients. In the first part of this paper, the association between schizophrenia and dementia is examined based on a psychosocial study conducted among the Danish population, comparing the likelihood of developing dementia in patients with schizophrenia to that of individuals without schizophrenia. The review of previous research findings indicates a positive correlation between a diagnosis of schizophrenia and the later development of dementia. This phenomenon may be due to the reason that schizophrenia is positively associated with several established risk factors of dementia. Then, the topic of the potential deficits of WM and EM is discussed using self-ordered task results and neurobiological evidence. Studies have showed that schizophrenia is likely to lead significant WM and EM limitations that are closely related to prefrontal cortex impairment.