Neurophysiological, Oculomotor, and Computational Modeling of Impaired Reading Ability in Schizophrenia

Abstract

Schizophrenia (Sz) is associated with deficits in fluent reading ability that compromise functional outcomes. Here, we utilize a combined eye-tracking, neurophysiological, and computational modeling approach to analyze underlying visual and oculomotor processes. Subjects included 26 Sz patients (SzP) and 26 healthy controls. Eye-tracking and electroencephalography data were acquired continuously during the reading of passages from the Gray Oral Reading Tests reading battery, permitting between-group evaluation of both oculomotor activity and fixation-related potentials (FRP). Schizophrenia patients showed a marked increase in time required per word (d = 1.3, P < .0001), reflecting both a moderate increase in fixation duration (d = .7, P = .026) and a large increase in the total saccade number (d = 1.6, P < .0001). Simulation models that incorporated alterations in both lower-level visual and oculomotor function as well as higher-level lexical processing performed better than models that assumed either deficit-type alone. In neurophysiological analyses, amplitude of the fixation-related P1 potential (P1f) was significantly reduced in SzP (d = .66, P = .013), reflecting reduced phase reset of ongoing theta-alpha band activity (d = .74, P = .019). In turn, P1f deficits significantly predicted increased saccade number both across groups (P = .017) and within SzP alone (P = .042). Computational and neurophysiological methods provide increasingly important approaches for investigating sensory contributions to impaired cognition during naturalistic processing in Sz. Here, we demonstrate deficits in reading rate that reflect both sensory/oculomotor- and semantic-level impairments and that manifest, respectively, as alterations in saccade number and fixation duration. Impaired P1f generation reflects impaired fixation-related reset of ongoing brain rhythms and suggests inefficient information processing within the early visual system as a basis for oculomotor dyscontrol during fluent reading in Sz.

Maternal immune activation alters the sequential structure of ultrasonic communications in male rats

“…For example, patients with schizophrenia tend to perform more poorly than healthy control participants on tasks that require participants to store and retrieve sequences of conceptual information ( Dreher et al., 2001 ; Fraser, 2004 ; Hill et al., 2013 ), and deficits in sequence learning have also been reported ( Enticott et al., 2008 ; Green et al., 1997 ; Pedersen et al., 2008 ). These sequencing and timing disruptions are wide-ranging, affecting processes as disparate as sequenced oculomotor movements and implicit motor sequencing ( Chrobak et al., 2017 ; Dias et al., 2021 ). On a broader level, an analysis of communication deficits suggests that impaired sequencing contributes to a substantial proportion of the structural communication failures observed in schizophrenia ( Docherty et al., 2006 ).…”

Relationships between Diffusion Tensor Imaging and Resting State Functional Connectivity in Patients with Schizophrenia and Healthy Controls: A Preliminary Study

“…The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Rockland Psychiatric Center/NKI Institutional Review Board. Resting state data (processed differently than herein) have been previously published [ 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 ].…”

Depression and Cognitive Impairment: Current Understanding of Its Neurobiology and Diagnosis

“…The outcome explains the cognitive impairment of schizophrenia. 124 More neuroimaging and genetic information are being included in diagnosis and prediction models to reduce erroneous diagnosis and ineffective treatment trials for depression. The current model integration type is limited to a single biological marker, and more biological markers need to be integrated.…”