Ronconi Luca, Florio Vincenzo, Bronzoni Silvia, Salvetti Beatrice, Raponi Agnese, Giupponi Giancarlo, Conca Andreas, Basso Demis
School of Psychology, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, 20132 Milan, Italy.
Division of Neuroscience, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, 20132 Milan, Italy.
Brain Sci. 2023 Jan 27;13(2):211. doi: 10.3390/brainsci13020211.
Anomalies of attentional selection have been repeatedly described in individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. However, a precise analysis of their ability to inhibit irrelevant visual information during attentional selection is not documented. Recent behavioral as well as neurophysiological and computational evidence showed that attentional search among different competing stimuli elicits an area of suppression in the immediate surrounding of the attentional focus. In the present study, the strength and spatial extension of this surround suppression were tested in individuals with schizophrenia and neurotypical controls. Participants were asked to report the orientation of a visual "pop-out" target, which appeared in different positions within a peripheral array of non-target stimuli. In half of the trials, after the target appeared, a probe circle circumscribed a non-target stimulus at various target-to-probe distances; in this case, participants were asked to report the probe orientation instead. Results suggest that, as compared to neurotypical controls, individuals with schizophrenia showed stronger and spatially more extended filtering of visual information in the areas surrounding their attentional focus. This increased filtering of visual information outside the focus of attention might potentially hamper their ability to integrate different elements into coherent percepts and influence higher order behavioral, affective, and cognitive domains.
注意力选择异常在精神分裂症谱系障碍患者中已被反复描述。然而，关于他们在注意力选择过程中抑制无关视觉信息能力的精确分析尚无记录。最近的行为学、神经生理学和计算学证据表明，在不同竞争刺激之间进行注意力搜索会在注意力焦点的紧邻区域引发一个抑制区域。在本研究中，对精神分裂症患者和神经典型对照组个体的这种周边抑制的强度和空间范围进行了测试。参与者被要求报告一个视觉“弹出式”目标的方向，该目标出现在非目标刺激的周边阵列中的不同位置。在一半的试验中，目标出现后，一个探测圆以不同的目标到探测距离围绕一个非目标刺激；在这种情况下，要求参与者报告探测圆的方向。结果表明，与神经典型对照组相比，精神分裂症患者在其注意力焦点周围区域对视觉信息的过滤更强且在空间上更广泛。注意力焦点之外视觉信息的这种增强过滤可能会潜在地妨碍他们将不同元素整合为连贯感知的能力，并影响更高层次的行为、情感和认知领域。
