Auditory Perception and Emotion Recognition in Young People at Risk for Psychosis

精神分裂症患者在处理基本的声音特性，如音高和强度， 基频处理的缺陷与情感识别障碍有关。我们 以前的研究表明，精神分裂症患者在基本的听觉功能上有广泛的缺陷， 处理，其中的关键是在相位锁定范围内的频谱处理的损害。 听觉系统然而，目前尚不清楚基本的听觉处理缺陷是否与 在患病前受损的情绪处理。对听觉情感感知的需求变成了 随着儿童进入青春期，社会交往变得更加复杂，因此我们 假设青少年情绪听觉知觉是精神分裂症的早期认知标记 发病在我们提出这一假设之前，有必要确定哪些听觉处理缺陷 是受损最严重的，并证明与超高风险个体的情绪处理有关 (UHR)导致精神分裂症这个项目的目标是确定离散的听觉 UHR个体听觉情绪处理缺陷的潜在障碍。我们假设UHR 个人将表现出广泛的赤字，在基本的听觉技能和测试，涉及频谱 听觉系统锁相范围内的辨别能力将是最受损害的技能之一 最严重的是无法从语调中理解情感。如果成功， 这些结果将有助于开发改善听觉情绪处理的治疗方法， 青春期和减轻后期发展为成人精神障碍。

Individuals with schizophrenia are impaired in processing basic sound properties, such as pitch and intensity, and deficits in processing of fundamental frequency are associated with emotion recognition impairments. Our previous work indicates that individuals with schizophrenia have widespread deficits in basic auditory processing, and key among these are impairments to spectral processing in the phase-locking range of the auditory system. However, it is not yet known if basic auditory processing deficits are associated with the impaired emotional processing preceding the illness. The demand on auditory emotion perception becomes more critical as children enter adolescence and social interactions become more complex. We therefore hypothesize that adolescents’ auditory perception of emotion is an early cognitive marker for schizophrenia onset. Before we can address this hypothesis it is essential to determine which auditory processing deficits are most impaired and which demonstrate a relationship to emotion processing in individuals at ultra high risk (UHR) for developing schizophrenia. The goals for this project are to determine the discrete auditory impairments underlying the auditory emotion processing deficits in UHR individuals. We hypothesize that UHR individuals will demonstrate widespread deficits in basic auditory skills and that tests that involve spectral discriminations within the phase-locking range of the auditory system will be among the most impaired skills and the most strongly associated with an inability to understand emotion from tone of voice. If successful, these results will enable the development of treatments that improve auditory emotion processing in adolescence and mitigate later progression to adult psychotic disorders.