The term splitting is defined as a process of formation of mental aggregates linked incompatible experiences producing numerous divisions in mental apparatus. Current findings indicate that psychological splitting in schizophrenia is likely specifically presented on a neural level as disrupted organization in neural communication. This disrupted neural communication likely underlies deficits in mental processing described by various neuroscientific concepts such as theories of disturbed connectivity, corollary discharges and dynamic complexity. In this context, a purpose of the theoretical part of the dissertation is to describe basic neuroscience theories that complementarily reflect interrelated processes between mind and brain underlying disturbances of mental integration that likely present a neural representation of the splitting. A purpose of the first part of the empirical research was to examine relationships between psychological process of splitting and disturbed cognitive and affective functions in schizophrenia. A sample of patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) was used as a control group in this study. Methods: In the clinical study, we have assessed 30 patients with schizophrenia and 35 patients with BPD. The symptoms of splitting were measured using self- reported...

Schizophrenia is a serious neuropsychiatric disease with a lifetime prevalence of 1% and it disrupts almost all mental functions. It manifests with many symptoms, which can be roughly classified into three main classes - positive, negative and cognitive dysfunctions. The psychosis, which can be often seen in schizophrenia, is a very serious problem that along with all other symptoms influences the patients' clinical status as well as quality of their life. As no direct causes or causal treatments for schizophrenia are known, scientist often focus on animal models of schizophrenia as tools for investigating mechanisms that can take a part in real disease and for seeking novel antipsychotics. This thesis aims at investigating two-week subchronic treatment with dizocilpine (MK-801), a non-competitive antagonist of NMDA receptors, in Wistar and Long-Evans rats aged 30 (PND 30) and 60 days (PND 60) at the onset of the treatment. Subsequently, long-term neurobehavioral consequences of this experimental psychosis were studied by testing rats at three behavioral tasks: the Elevated-plus maze (EPM), the Morris water maze (MWM) and active place avoidance on a rotating arena (Carousel). The Western blot method was used to determine post-mortem changes in expression of the NR1, NR2A and NR2B subunits of the...

Cognitive deficit presents a significant problem affecting the life of schizophrenia patients. Despite the variability of the deficit, which influences almost all cognitive domains, the most profound seems to be deficit in memory and executive functioning with direct impact on daily functioning of patients with schizophrenia. As the pharmacologic interventions do not seem to bring satisfying results, the cognitive remediation seems to bet the most effective way of intervention of the deficit. Efficacy of cognitive remediation approach was repeatedly confirmed on the level of structural and functional changes of the brain. Nevertheless, often discussed are the issues of ecological validity of cognitive remediation and its controversial ability of transfer of acquired abilities and skills into the real life. In this work, we present development of a new method potentially applicable in the remediation of deficit of declarative memory in schizophrenia patients designed in ecologically valid environment of virtual supermarket. In the first two pilot studies, we tested the functionality of the task in the healthy volunteers and we compared their performance in the virtual task with the results in standard psychological memory tests. After considering the findings from the pilot studies, we verified the...

The thesis is focused on methods of machine learning used for recognising the first stage of schizophrenia in images from nuclear-magnetic resonance. The introduction of this paper is focused primarily on physical principles. Further in this work, the attention is given to registration methods, reduction of data set and machine learning. In the classification part, simmilarity rates, support vectors´ method, K-nearest neighbour classification and K-means are described. The last stage of theoretical part is focused on evaluation of the clasification. In practical part the results of reduction data set by methods PCA, CRLS-PCA and subjects PCA are described. Furthermore, the practical part is focused on pattern recognition by methods K-NN, K-means and test K-NN method on real data. Abnormalities which are recognised by some classification methods can distinguish patients with schizophrenia from healthy controls.

Active allothetic avoidance task (AAPA) could be a useful tool to study cognitive deficit of schizofrenia. In this task two different reference frames are created. The subject should distinguish which oriental frame is relevant for navigation and is proper for the solution of the task. This ability is called cognitive coordination. It is proved that the process of cognitive coordination is impaired in schizophrenic individuals, which comes to light in a Stroop test. Schizophrenia-like behavior can be modelled on the rats by a non-competitive NMDA receptor antagonist dizocipline (MK-801). The aim of these thesis was to study the existence of alternative strategies and the influence of different habituation on the performance of rats within AAPA. Furthermore, we have been studying the influence of MK-801 at a dose of 0.15mg / kg on the cognitive coordination in this task. We have found that the rats are able to learn AAPA task after pre-training without distal orientation cues, using relatively efficient alternative strategies. In these alternative strategies the idiothetic navigation is applied. The performance of rats in AAPA task is influenced by different conditions during habituation. We have proved that MK-801 at this dosage has no effect on cognitive performance of the rats in AAPA task, but...

THE EMOTION-PARADOX 1 Abstract The emotion-paradox in schizophrenia describes a dissociation between the grossly impaired perception of emotion and relatively preserved experience thereof. Most posit that the emotion-paradox arises from a generalized emotion perception impairment. Others counter that it represents an artefact of methodological restrictions or a separate dissociation between explicit and implicit emotion. This thesis aimed to explain the emotion-paradox in schizophrenia and resolve the competing interpretations of its root. Two studies were conducted to this end. The studies drew from the same sample, including 45 persons with schizophrenia of various symptomatology, and 45 controls with no psychiatric anamnesis or familial history of schizophrenia. The groups did not differ in age, gender, education or music education. In Study 1, the participants listened to musical stimuli and rated their perception and experience of the valence and arousal that these stimuli relayed. In Study 2, the participants completed a newly developed emotional Stroop task, in which they identified the colour of a series of neutral and negative descriptors of positive, negative, or no symptoms of schizophrenia. Findings of Study 1 indicated: a) that persons with schizophrenia recognize musical emotions as accurately...

(in English): This work is focused on mental illness. It deals deeply with schizophrenia, its forms, causes, symptoms and also impacts on social life of people with this diagnosis. How society perceives the mentally ill and which prejudices still persist.

(in English): This work is focused on mental illness. It deals deeply with schizophrenia, its forms, causes, symptoms and also impacts on social life of people with this diagnosis. How society perceives the mentally ill and which prejudices still persist.

This diploma thesis examines the stigmatization of schizophrenia on selected Czech news sites. Schizophrenia is one of the most stigmatized mental illnesses. This stigma is also aided by the media, which tends to portray schizophrenia in an overly negative way. The aim of this work is to determine how schizophrenia is stigmatized on selected news sites. The theoretical part of the thesis briefly summarizes the issue of media content and clarifies the basic concepts important for the study of this content. The theoretical basis for the study of stigmatization of schizophrenia were also laid in this part. In the practical part, a content analysis of articles mentioning schizophrenia was performer. Those articles were published during 2019 on the news sites novinky.cz, idnes.cz, aktualne.cz, denik.cz and blesk.cz. Also, a qualitative analysis of the comments of the recipients, who spoke about people with schizophrenia in discussion forums for the examined articles, was performed. The work is intended for participants engaged in destigmatization projects and for creators of media content. The findings from this work can help the ongoing destigmatization process in the Czech Republic.

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