Visual processing in schizophrenia and SPD

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This is a resubmission of a competitive renewal application. A loss of coordination, or disconnection, among brain regions may contribute to the cognitive deficits observed in schizophrenia. This loss of integration has been attributed to a pervasive deficit in neural synchronization, which may be critical for temporal processing and perceptual integration within the nervous system. This project will use behavioral and electrophysiological (EEG) methods to evaluate neural synchronization, temporal processing, and cognitive integration in patients with schizophrenia and in participants with schizotypal personality disorder (SPD). Signal power, noise, and phase relationships will be analyzed in transient and steady state event-related potentials (ERPs). Psychophysical measures will be used to capture perceptual and cognitive parameters which may be associated with neural synchrony, including motion thresholds, calculation efficiency, internal noise, and working memory operations. We hypothesize that patients with schizophrenia will show reduced EEG power, poorer phase synchronization, and higher noise in EEG responses, while SPD subjects will show electrophysiological evidence of sensory hyperactivation and attention deficit. On behavioral tasks, both schizophrenic patients and SPD subjects will show more severe deficits with increased demands for temporal and feature integration, more precise temporal resolution, and greater memory load. Familial SPD subjects will show more severe intellectual impairment and social maladjustment compared to non-familial SPD subjects. These findings may identify neurobehavioral deficits common to SZ and SPD, as well as features which differentiate these disorders.