Disruption of auditory and visual attention in schizophrenia

Wood, Susan M.; Potts, Geoffrey F.; Martin, Laura E.; Kothmann, Delia; Hall, Jennie F.; Ulanday, Jocelyn B.

doi:10.1016/j.pscychresns.2007.04.014

« Previous Next »Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging
Volume 156, Issue 2 , Pages 105-116, 15 November 2007

Disruption of auditory and visual attention in schizophrenia

Susan M. Wood
- Department of Psychology, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA
- Corresponding author. Department of Psychology, 126 Heyne Building, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-5022, USA. Tel.: +1 832 725 3209; fax: +1 713 743 8588.
Geoffrey F. Potts
- Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA
Laura E. Martin
- Hoglund Brain Imaging Center, University of Kansas Medical Center, Lawrence, KS, USA
Delia Kothmann
- Research Imaging Center, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA
Jennie F. Hall
- Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA
- Department of Psychiatry, Michael E DeBakey VA Medical Center, Houston, TX, USA
Jocelyn B. Ulanday
- Department of Psychiatry, Michael E DeBakey VA Medical Center, Houston, TX, USA

Received 13 July 2006; received in revised form 4 March 2007; accepted 20 April 2007.

Abstract

Disruption of attention is a hallmark symptom of schizophrenia, and event-related potentials have been instrumental in studying this cognitive deficit. Event-related potentials (ERPs) have been used to study attention and its disruption in schizophrenia, with the most common finding of a reduced P300 component in auditory tasks. Some studies have found sparing of the P300 in visual attention, but reduction of an earlier attention-sensitive N2b, suggesting that the N2b may be a more sensitive index of attention disruption in schizophrenia. The current study compared visual and auditory attention using both unimodal and bimodal stimulus presentation in the same participants to examine the impact of schizophrenia on attention at both the early N2b and later P300 stages. Both N2b and P300 showed attention effects, being larger to targets than non-targets in all tasks. The N2b was reduced in the patient group in all tasks except the bimodal attend visual task, while the P300 was not reduced in the patients in any condition. This indicates that early attention, as indexed by the N2b, is differentially impaired in patients with schizophrenia, even when later attention, indexed by the P300, is intact.

Keywords: Event-related potentials (ERP), N2b, P300, Auditory, Visual, Bimodal, Attention