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Insensitivity to temporal context in schizophrenia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 June 2014

A Richards,
J Todd and
P Michie
A Richards
Affiliation:
The University of Newcastle, Australia
J Todd
Affiliation:
The University of Newcastle, Australia
P Michie
Affiliation:
The University of Newcastle, Australia
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Abstract

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Information

Type
Abstracts from ‘Brainwaves’— The Australasian Society for Psychiatric Research Annual Meeting 2006, 6–8 December, Sydney, Australia
Information
Acta Neuropsychiatrica , Volume 18 , Issue 6 , December 2006, pp. 305 - 306
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 Blackwell Munksgaard

Background:

Elicitation of the mismatch negativity (MMN) occurs when the auditory system detects a mismatch between a current sound and the memory formed of a repetitious sequence. MMN can be conceptualized as occurring when a sound violates the context established by preceding events. Individuals with schizophrenia are known to show impairments in the ability to use context when processing the relevance of an event. In this study, we examined whether this impairment in using context would result in in-sensitivity to the effects of temporal context on MMN. Specifically, we explore how temporal context affects the MMN produced by healthy controls and individuals with schizophrenia.

Method:

Eighteen patients and age- and sex-matched controls were presented with two sound sequences over headphones, with attention directed toward a silent movie with subtitles. In the Fixed stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) sequence, MMN was measured to a 100-ms duration deviant among 50-ms standard tones at a regular 500-ms SOA. The same tones were used in the jittered SOA sequence, with irregular SOAs ranging from 250 to 750 ms.

Results:

In controls, the MMN elicited by duration deviants with jittered SOA was significantly reduced compared with the same deviant occurring in a sequence with fixed SOA. However, changing temporal context/regularity had no significant impact on the MMN produced by the schizophrenia group.

Conclusions:

The results indicate that individuals with schizophrenia have difficulty encoding and forming a model of the temporal context in which a sound occurs.