Detecting Verbal Auditory Hallucination Among Schizophrenia Patients by Integrating Alternate Auditory Attention Tasks in Contralateral Suppression of Otoacoustic Emissions

Abstract

Subjective evaluations of verbal auditory hallucinations (VAH) in schizophrenia have limitations; thus, combining them with objective measures like neuroimaging may provide more accurate insights into brain activity during VAH episodes. However, neuroimaging is often costly and time-consuming, prompting the search for alternative methods. This study explores the integration of ALternate AUDItory AttentioN (ALAUDIN©) tasks with Contralateral Suppression of Otoacoustic Emissions (CSOAE) as a rapid and cost-effective approach to detect VAH in schizophrenia patients. A total of 57 healthy controls (HC) and 10 schizophrenia patients; five with active and five with passive VAH; participated. Various contralateral stimuli, including white noise (WN) alone and WN combined with auditory attention tasks, were used to evaluate CSOAE. While no significant differences in suppression were found between the left and right ears across all groups, patients with active VAH demonstrated significantly higher suppression than HC for specific stimuli (CS4). Notably, incorporating ALAUDIN© tasks did not significantly enhance suppression in HC or patients with passive VAH but descriptively increased suppression in those with active VAH. These results suggest that ALAUDIN©-CSOAE may effectively differentiate schizophrenia patients with VAH from healthy individuals, warranting further research with larger sample sizes to validate these findings.