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交功能受损。以往的研究表明，由于语音的音高、重音和节奏(韵律)所传达的语音的情感和语义内容的解释和表达能力一直受到损害。传统上，这些缺陷是在精神分裂症的情绪障碍的背景下看到的。然而，基本的音频-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，在大脑皮质分析的最早阶段就存在的音调的“回声模板”的产生过程中，存在听觉缺陷的电生理学证据。然而，据作者所知，还没有研究表明早期大脑皮层音调知觉与韵律缺陷之间存在联系。在这项拟议的研究中，内森·克莱恩研究所将对精神分裂症患者和对照组进行一系列任务，检查早期皮质听觉障碍以及音乐和韵律障碍。第二个实验将使用在这个项目过程中开发的新刺激。这些将被用于直接测试音调轮廓识别和韵律理解之间的关系的ERP范例。有人假设，在听觉音调匹配任务中，前注意表现的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到损害，并成为语音正确韵律处理的组成部分。进一步假设，这些缺陷的大小和存在将与患者的症状有关。对精神分裂症韵律缺陷的本质的理解应该被证明对疾病的诊断、治疗和病因学理解是有价值的。

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.