Apathy in Schizophrenia: A Case-Control Clinical and Neuropsychological Study

The main objective is to confirm that schizophrenic patients are apathetic compared to health volunteers. Secondary objectives: - to investigate if apathy is related to a particular aspect of the disease (i.e., negative or positive symptomatology); - to investigate if apathy correlates with executive dysfunction; - to investigate if apathy is associated with a specific mechanism using an experimental task specially designed to characterise different mechanisms (i.e., "a-motivation", "cognitive inertia", and "uncoupling"); - to investigate if there is a volumetric abnormality affecting the executive system in apathetic schizophrenic patients; - to link these possible volumetric abnormalities to the prefrontal cortex-basal ganglia circuits according to a specific apathy subtype within the apathetic schizophrenic group.