Vision Research Laboratory, Beritashvili Centre of Experimental Biomedicine, Tbilisi, Georgia; Institute of Cognitive Neurosciences, Agricultural University of Georgia, Tbilisi, Georgia.
Université de Toulouse-UPS, CNRS, Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition, Toulouse, France; Laboratory of Psychophysics, Brain Mind Institute, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL),1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
Psychiatry Res. 2015 Apr 30;226(2-3):441-5. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2015.01.009. Epub 2015 Jan 31.
Visual paradigms are versatile tools to investigate the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Contextual modulation refers to a class of paradigms where a target is flanked by neighbouring elements, which either deteriorate or facilitate target perception. It is often proposed that contextual modulation is weakened in schizophrenia compared to controls, with facilitating contexts being less facilitating and deteriorating contexts being less deteriorating. However, results are mixed. In addition, facilitating and deteriorating effects are usually determined in different paradigms, making comparisons difficult. Here, we used a crowding paradigm in which both facilitation and deterioration effects can be determined all together. We found a main effect of group, i.e., patients performed worse in all conditions compared to controls. However, when we discounted for this main effect, facilitation and deterioration were well comparable to controls. Our results indicate that contextual modulation can be intact in schizophrenia patients.
视空间范式是研究精神分裂症病理生理学的多用途工具。语境调制是一类范式，其中目标被相邻元素包围，这些元素会削弱或促进目标感知。通常认为，与对照组相比，精神分裂症患者的语境调制较弱，促进语境的促进作用较小，而削弱语境的削弱作用较小。然而，结果却各不相同。此外，促进和削弱效应通常在不同的范式中确定，这使得比较变得困难。在这里，我们使用了一种拥挤范式，其中可以同时确定促进和削弱效应。我们发现了一个组间的主要效应，即与对照组相比，患者在所有条件下的表现都更差。然而，当我们排除这个主要效应时，促进和削弱与对照组相当。我们的结果表明，语境调制在精神分裂症患者中可能是完整的。
