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The modulatory role of selective attention on p50 sensory gating and event related beta activity in schizophrenia

University of British Columbia

Sensory gating refers the central nervous system’s capacity to filter redundant sensory information. Deficient auditory sensory gating abilities have been documented in individuals with schizophrenia and may contribute to some of the sensory and perceptual disturbances associated with this disorder. When using event-related potentials (ERP) to investigate the phenomenon of sensory gating, traditional dual-click paradigms focus on the attenuation in P50 amplitude to the second click (S2) compared to the first click (S1). While long believed to be pre-attentional, recent findings have suggested that this phenomenon can be modulated by selective attention. A standard dual-click task and two modified dual-click tasks that required participants to attend to either S1 or S2 were used to examine the effect of selective attention on S1 or S2 P50 amplitude in (n=25) participants with schizophrenia and (n=24) healthy controls. Results reveal that attending to S1 increases P50 amplitude to S1 for healthy controls but not for the schizophrenia group. There were no increases to S2 P50 amplitude for either group when attending to S2. Subsequently there were also no differences for either group to the S1-S2 difference scores when attending to S1 or S2. Wavelet analysis of event-related Beta-1 frequency activity revealed that controls were able to augment their Beta-1 response to S1 when attending to S1 but not their Beta-1 response to S2-when attending to S2. The schizophrenia group did not show increased Beta-1 activity when attending to S1 but did show increased Beta-1 activity to S2 when attending to S1 and when attending to S2. The different pattern of Beta-1 activity in controls and individuals with schizophrenia might reflect an underlying deficiency that individuals with schizophrenia have in processing salient auditory information. Furthermore, these results are consistent within the context of selective attention deficiencies that are commonly reported in individuals with schizophrenia.

Text

2011-08-29

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/36968

Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/