Aberrant Auditory Processing in Schizophrenia and in Subjects at Ultra-High-Risk for Psychosis

Abstract

The N1 and the mismatch negativity (MMN) responses observed in electroencephalographic and magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings reflect sensory processing, sensory memory, and adaptation and are usually abnormal in patients with schizophrenia. However, their differential sensitivity to ultra-high-risk (UHR) status is controversial. The current study evaluated the sensitivity of MEG N1m, N1m adaptation, and magnetic counterpart of MMN (MMNm) in 16 UHR subjects, 15 schizophrenia patients, and 18 healthy controls (HCs) during a passive auditory oddball task. N1m adaptation was assessed using the difference in N1m dipole moment between the first and last standard tones in a standard stimulus sequence. N1m adaptation occurred in HCs, whereas neither the UHR nor the schizophrenia groups showed adaptation to the standard tone on repeated presentations. The UHR group had values between those for HCs and schizophrenia patients. Additionally, MMNm dipole moment was reduced in both the UHR and patient groups compared with HCs, whereas the UHR and schizophrenia groups did not differ from each other. These findings indicated that both N1m adaptation and MMNm were altered in UHR subjects and in schizophrenia patients, despite unaffected N1m dipole moment to the first standard tones. Moreover, both UHR and schizophrenia groups failed to show adaptation of the N1m to repeated standard tones. This failure in adaptation was more severe in patients than UHR subjects, suggesting that auditory adaptation may be sensitive to the progression of the illness and be an early biomarker of UHR for psychosis. Deficits in auditory sensory memory, on the other hand, may be similarly impaired in both groups.

Can new paradigms bring new perspectives for mismatch negativity studies in schizophrenia?

“…A later study (Kiang et al 2009) of large groups of participants found a significant reduction in duration MMN amplitude with age in both healthy controls and schizophrenia patients aged between 18 and 65 years old. A study which compared frequency and duration deviance MMN found that duration MMN was more stable over the course of schizophrenia (Michie et al 2000); there is however evidence that the reduction in duration MMN is greater in the early stages of schizophrenia or even in patients in the prodromal stage (Bodatsch et al 2011;Perez et al 2014;Higuchi et al 2014;Hermens et al 2010;Jahshan et al 2012;Nagai et al 2013a); similar findings have been reported for the magnetic counterpart of MMN (Shin et al 2012).…”

114. Electrophysiological, Cognitive and Clinical Profiles of At-Risk Mental State: The Longitudinal Minds in Transition (MinT) Study

“…During the course of the current longitudinal study, a growing number of reports have either compared MMN in an at-risk group to healthy controls [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] or additionally compared UHR individuals who transitioned to psychosis to those who did not transition [33, [42][43][44][45]. Reviews of these studies [9,11,31,46,47] and a meta-analysis [48] have suggested reduced MMN in UHR relative to healthy controls with the majority of studies reporting significant reduction in MMN to at least one type of deviant.…”

Impaired pre-attentive auditory processing in fibromyalgia: A mismatch negativity (MMN) study

“…To validate the multi-dipole model, the measured MEG signals were compared to the responses predicted by the computed model (Lim et al, 2012). The peak latencies and amplitudes of the MMNm source in each hemisphere were determined individually (Takegata et al, 2004;Shin et al, 2009Shin et al, , 2012Teki et al, 2013). In addition, we calculated the directional asymmetry coefficient using the following equation:…”

“…In multiple clinical groups of, for example, schizophrenia and bipolar disease, MMN dysfunction has been demonstrated to be associated with aberrant pre-attentive auditory processing (Shin et al, 2009(Shin et al, , 2012Näätänen et al, 2011). However, no MMN studies have been conducted specifically in FM.…”