Neurostructural correlates of prosody in schizophrenia

描述（由申请人提供）：精神分裂症的两个主要特征是情感迟钝和社会功能受损。先前的研究表明，通过语音的音高、重音和节奏（韵律）来解释和表达语音的情感和语义内容的能力持续受损。这些缺陷通常在精神分裂症的情绪障碍中被发现。然而，基本的听觉心理物理学研究表明，精神分裂症患者对简单音调的音高感知存在根本缺陷。这些研究表明，电生理学证据表明，即使在皮层分析的最早阶段，在生成音调的“回声模板”时，听觉缺陷也存在。然而，据笔者所知，没有研究表明早期皮层音高感知和韵律缺陷之间存在联系。在提议的研究中，一系列检查早期皮层听觉缺陷以及音乐和韵律缺陷的任务将在内森克莱恩研究所对精神分裂症患者和对照组进行。第二个实验将使用在这个项目过程中开发的新刺激。这些将在ERP范例中使用，该范例将直接测试音高轮廓识别和韵律理解之间的关系。我们假设，在听觉音调匹配任务上的注意前表现缺陷将显著地导致高阶感觉听觉分析的缺陷。这些缺陷将导致音乐中音高轮廓的处理受损，并对语音的正确韵律处理不可或缺。进一步假设，这些缺陷的大小和存在将与患者的症状有关。对精神分裂症节律缺陷本质的了解，对于精神分裂症的诊断、治疗和病因学理解都是有价值的。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Two central characteristics of schizophrenia are blunted affect and impaired social functioning. Previous studies have shown consistent impairment in the ability to interpret, as well as to express emotional and semantic content of speech as conveyed by pitch, stress and rhythm of the speech utterance (prosody). Classically these deficits have been seen within the context of emotional disturbance in schizophrenia. However, basic audio- psychophysical studies have shown fundamental deficits in pitch perception of simple tones in schizophrenics. These studies have shown electrophysiological evidence of auditory deficits in the generation of an "echoic template" for tones present at even the earliest stage of cortical analysis. Yet to this author's knowledge, no research has shown a connection between early cortical pitch perception and prosodic deficits. In the proposed study, a battery of tasks examining early cortical auditory deficits as well as musical and prosodic deficits will be administered to patients with schizophrenia and control subjects at the Nathan Kline Institute. A second experiment will employ new stimuli developed during the course of this project. These will be used in an ERP paradigm that will directly test the relationship between pitch contour recognition and prosodic comprehension. It is hypothesized that deficits in pre-attentive performance on the auditory tone-matching task will contribute significantly to deficits in higher order sensory-auditory analysis. These deficits will lead to impaired processing of pitch contours within music and integral to the proper prosodic processing of speech. It is further hypothesized that the magnitude and presence of these deficits will be related to patient symptomology. An understanding of the nature of prosodic deficits in schizophrenia should prove valuable for diagnosis, treatment and etiological understanding of the illness.