Diao Mingyi, Demchenko Ilya, Asare Gifty, Quan Jingyan, Debruille J Bruno
Douglas Mental Health University Institute, Montreal, Qc, Canada.
Department of Neurosciences, McGill University, Montreal, Qc, Canada.
Schizophrenia (Heidelb). 2023 Sep 29;9(1):66. doi: 10.1038/s41537-023-00394-5.
Schizophrenia patients make more errors and have longer reaction times (RTs) than healthy controls in most cognitive tasks. Deficits are also observed in subclinical participants having high scores on the schizotypal personality questionnaire (SPQ). They are accompanied by smaller amplitudes of the event-related brain potentials (ERPs) that index attention and semantic- and working-memory. These functions are thus thought to be impaired in individuals having various schizophrenia attributes (SzAs). Nevertheless, normal RTs were recently found in SzAs during a particular self-referential task where half of the stimuli were names of extraordinary social roles (e.g., genius). Each name (ordinary or extraordinary) was presented individually, and participants were asked to decide whether or not they would consider themselves performing the role at any moment of their lives. To further test an absence of cognitive deficits in this task, the ERPs elicited by names of social roles were also examined in 175 healthy participants. The absence of longer RTs in high- than in low-SPQs was replicated. Moreover, the ERPs of high SPQs had larger occipital N1s, larger P2s and larger occipital N400s than those of low SPQs while late positive potentials (LPPs) were of similar amplitudes. Such results are consistent with clinical observations of greater attention and faster processing of stimuli related to extraordinary/delusional beliefs. Further studies should test whether the cognitive deficits found in SzAs are due to the use of tasks and stimuli that are less within their focus of interest than within that of healthy controls.
在大多数认知任务中，精神分裂症患者比健康对照者犯更多错误，反应时间（RTs）更长。在分裂型人格问卷（SPQ）得分高的亚临床参与者中也观察到了缺陷。这些缺陷伴随着事件相关脑电位（ERP）的较小振幅，ERP可反映注意力、语义和工作记忆。因此，这些功能被认为在具有各种精神分裂症属性（SzAs）的个体中受损。然而，最近发现SzAs在一项特定的自我参照任务中反应时间正常，该任务中一半的刺激是特殊社会角色（如天才）的名字。每个名字（普通或特殊）单独呈现，参与者被要求决定他们是否会认为自己在生命中的任何时刻都能扮演这个角色。为了进一步测试该任务中是否不存在认知缺陷，还对175名健康参与者进行了社会角色名字引发的ERP研究。重复了高SPQ组比低SPQ组没有更长反应时间的结果。此外，高SPQ组的ERP在枕叶N1、P2和枕叶N400比低SPQ组更大，而晚期正电位（LPP）的振幅相似。这些结果与临床观察结果一致，即对与特殊/妄想信念相关的刺激有更大的注意力和更快的处理速度。进一步的研究应该测试SzAs中发现的认知缺陷是否是由于所使用的任务和刺激与其兴趣焦点相比，比健康对照者的兴趣焦点更不相关。
