Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California, Los Angeles, United States of America; VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, United States of America.
Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California, Los Angeles, United States of America; VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, United States of America.
Schizophr Res. 2022 Oct;248:151-157. doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2022.08.020. Epub 2022 Sep 2.
Schizophrenia is associated with deficits in both object perception and visual attention. However, few studies in schizophrenia have investigated object-based attention, which is dissociable from other forms of visuospatial attention. Recent research in healthy populations has shown that the 'spotlight' of sustained visual attention flickers in a rhythmic, oscillatory fashion at specific frequencies in the 4-12 Hz range. In healthy samples, this oscillatory signature has been used to investigate spatiotemporal dynamics of object-based attention, showing that the attentional spotlight spreads to uncued locations within cued objects, and also periodically alternates focus between cued and uncued objects. In this study, we adapted a performance-based visual object cueing task to investigate object-based attention in individuals with a schizophrenia diagnosis and healthy controls. In controls, spatiotemporal patterns of object-based attention closely resembled those reported in previous studies of healthy individuals. In the schizophrenia group, the oscillatory signature of attention also appeared in the location of the cue and on uncued objects, similar to the effects in controls. Indeed, the oscillatory signature of attention at the spatial location of the cue was stronger in the schizophrenia group than in controls. However, attention did not spread across the cued object in schizophrenia; rather, attention appeared to remain hyperfocused at the spatial location of the cue. These findings provide the first evidence that visual attention has oscillatory characteristics in schizophrenia, as in the general population. The results also show that the fundamental process of attentional spreading which underlies object-based attention is abnormal in schizophrenia.
精神分裂症与物体感知和视觉注意力缺陷有关。然而，精神分裂症领域的研究很少涉及基于物体的注意力，它与其他形式的空间视觉注意力不同。最近在健康人群中的研究表明，持续视觉注意力的“焦点”以特定的 4-12 Hz 范围内的节奏、振荡方式闪烁。在健康样本中，这种振荡特征被用于研究基于物体的注意力的时空动态，表明注意力的焦点在提示的物体内部未提示的位置扩散，并且在提示和未提示的物体之间周期性地交替焦点。在这项研究中，我们改编了一种基于表现的视觉物体提示任务，以调查有精神分裂症诊断的个体和健康对照组的基于物体的注意力。在对照组中，基于物体的注意力的时空模式与之前对健康个体的研究中报告的模式非常相似。在精神分裂症组中，注意力的振荡特征也出现在提示和未提示的物体上，与对照组的效果相似。事实上，在提示位置的注意力的振荡特征在精神分裂症组中比对照组更强。然而，在精神分裂症中，注意力并没有在提示的物体上扩散；相反，注意力似乎仍然在提示的空间位置过度集中。这些发现首次提供了证据，表明精神分裂症中的视觉注意力具有与一般人群相同的振荡特征。研究结果还表明，基于物体的注意力的注意力扩散的基本过程在精神分裂症中是异常的。
