Neurostructural correlates of prosody in schizophrenia

描述（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，在解释能力，以及表达情感和语义的语音内容的能力，如音高，重音和语音话语的节奏（韵律）所传达的一致损害。这些缺陷通常见于精神分裂症患者的情绪障碍。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性缺陷。这些研究表明，即使在最早的皮层分析阶段，在产生音调的“回声模板”方面，听觉缺陷的电生理证据也存在。然而，据作者所知，没有研究表明早期皮质音高感知和韵律缺陷之间的联系。在拟议的研究中，一组任务检查早期皮质听觉缺陷以及音乐和韵律缺陷将被管理到精神分裂症患者和对照组在内森克莱恩研究所。第二个实验将采用在本项目过程中开发的新刺激。这些将被用于ERP范式，将直接测试音高轮廓识别和韵律理解之间的关系。据推测，赤字前注意性能的听觉音调匹配任务将有助于显着赤字高阶感官听觉分析。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，这些缺陷的程度和存在将与患者病理学相关。了解精神分裂症患者的韵律缺陷的性质，对于诊断、治疗和病因学的理解都是有价值的。

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.