Auditory stream segregation impairments in schizophrenia

Abstract

We used behavior and event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine auditory stream segregation in people with schizophrenia and control participants. During each trial, a context pattern was presented, consisting of low (A) and high (B) tones in a repeating ABA pattern, with a frequency separation (Δf) of 3, 6, or 12 semitones. Next, a test ABA-pattern was presented that always had a 6-semitone Δf. Larger Δf during the context resulted in more perception of two streams and larger N1 and P2 ERPs, but less perception of two streams during the test pattern. These effects of Δf were smaller in schizophrenia. Individuals with schizophrenia also showed a reduced effect of prior perceptual judgments. Overall, the findings demonstrate that people with schizophrenia have abnormalities in segregating sounds. These abnormalities result from difficulties utilizing frequency cues in addition to reduced temporal context effects.

Long-Term Cardiovascular Fitness Is Associated with Auditory Attentional Control in Old Adults: Neuro-Behavioral Evidence

“…However, the P2 has also been shown to be modulated by sensory features, e.g. by spectral complexity and music training [43], by laboratory based discrimination training [44], [45], or by frequency separation of tones in a stream segregation task [46]–[48]. Given that there were no significant differences between active and inactive participants, it appears that these early processes of stimulus detection and evaluation were not directly related to the participants’ physical fitness.…”

Abnormal auditory pattern perception in schizophrenia

“…While these correlations are exploratory and require further investigation, they were not significantly correlated with early MMN or simple MMN, suggesting that there is something specific about the late MMN that is reflecting a certain subset of behavioral symptoms. Sz also show other impairments in auditory processing such as the ability to segregate auditory information (Ramage et al, 2012; Weintraub et al, 2012), and in ERP measures of auditory grouping (Coffman et al, 2016), which may be related to the deficits in deviance detection.…”

Event-related potentials demonstrate deficits in acoustic segmentation in schizophrenia

“…Also, schizophrenia patients are slower to learn visual sequences in a serial reaction time task (Adini et al, 2015). Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence suggests impairment in the ability to perceptually segregate auditory streams in schizophrenia (Weintraub et al, 2012; Ramage et al, 2012); however, effects of schizophrenia on electrophysiological indices of segmentation of acoustic patterns into auditory objects has not been studied. In this paper, we identify the electrophysiological correlates of acoustic segmentation in healthy subjects and identify deficits in these measures in schizophrenia.…”