Clinical, behavioural and neural validation of the PANSS amotivation factor.

Negative symptoms in schizophrenia have been suggested to map onto two distinct factors – amotivation and diminished expression. Only recently, two-factor solutions for measuring negative symptoms have been proposed for the Positive and Negative Symptom Scale (PANSS), the most commonly used scale to assess the psychopathology of patients with schizophrenia. We aimed to validate the PANSS two-factor structure on a clinical, behavioural and neural level.