Impairment in predictive processes during auditory mismatch negativity in ScZ: Evidence from event‐related fields

Abstract

Patients with schizophrenia (ScZ) show pronounced dysfunctions in auditory perception but the underlying mechanisms as well as the localization of the deficit remain unclear. To examine these questions, the current study examined whether alterations in the neuromagnetic mismatch negativity (MMNm) in ScZ-patients could involve an impairment in sensory predictions in local sensory and higher auditory areas. Using a whole-head MEG-approach, we investigated the MMNm as well as P300m and N100m amplitudes during a hierarchical auditory novelty paradigm in 16 medicated ScZ-patients and 16 controls. In addition, responses to omitted sounds were investigated, allowing for a critical test of the predictive coding hypothesis. Source-localization was performed to identify the generators of the MMNm, omission responses as well as the P300m. Clinical symptoms were examined with the positive and negative syndrome scale. Event-related fields (ERFs) to standard sounds were intact in ScZ-patients. However, the ScZ-group showed a reduction in the amplitude of the MMNm during both local (within trials) and global (across trials) conditions as well as an absent P300m at the global level. Importantly, responses to sound omissions were reduced in ScZ-patients which overlapped both in latency and generators with the MMNm sources. Thus, our data suggest that auditory dysfunctions in ScZ involve impaired predictive processes that involve deficits in both automatic and conscious detection of auditory regularities. Hum Brain Mapp 38:5082-5093, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Impaired conscious access and abnormal attentional amplification in schizophrenia

“…Similar findings could indeed also stem from impaired top-down attentional processes. This latter explanation is worth considering given the widely acknowledge modulatory effect that attention may have on early brain activation including the mismatch negativity ( Kasai et al 1999 ; Oades et al 1997 ; Sauer et al 2017 ), the P1 ( Feng et al 2012 ; Hillyard and Anllo-Vento 1998 ; Luck and Ford 1998 ; Wyart et al 2012 ), and probably the P50 in healthy controls ( Guterman et al, 1992 ) and schizophrenic patients ( Yee et al 2010 ). An additional argument suggesting that bottom-up processing may not be responsible for the patients' elevated consciousness threshold in masking experiments comes from the observation that subliminal processing can be fully preserved in schizophrenia patients, as reported in a variety of paradigms with masked words ( Dehaene et al 2003a ) or digits ( Del Cul et al 2006 ), subliminal error detection ( Charles et al 2017 ) and response inhibition ( Huddy et al 2009 ; for a review, see: Berkovitch et al 2017 ).…”

Atypical cortical connectivity in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as measured by magnetoencephalography (MEG)

“…For omission responses, because no tone is presented during the omission period, MMFs are unlikely to reflect the rebound from adaptation in auditory cortex, and therefore constitute a more reliable marker of prediction error (Recasens & Uhlhaas, 2017;Sauer et al, 2017;Wacongne et al, 2011). Our results indicate that it is this neural process, rather than a simple adaptation, which is reduced in ASD.…”

“…Finally, it is important to note that reductions in the auditory oddball response have been reported for other psychiatric conditions, most notably schizophrenia (Javitt, Lee, Kantrowitz, & Martinez, 2018;Michie, 2001;Sauer et al, 2017), and Parkinson's Disease (Pekkonen, Jousmäki, Reinikainen, & Partanen, 1995). Whilst still heavily debated, there is emerging evidence that predictive-coding represents a ubiquitous and fundamental computational mechanism of brain function (Bastos et al, 2012;Friston, 2005;Friston, 2017;Friston, Bastos, Pinotsis, & Litvak, 2015).…”

“…As well as oddball responses to unexpected deviant sounds, the brain also responds to the unexpected omission of sounds (Bendixen, SanMiguel, & Schröger, 2012;Raij, McEvoy, Mäkelä, & Hari, 1997). The omission MMN/MMF is unlikely to be driven by neural adaptation, and therefore represents a more direct measure of prediction violations (Sauer et al, 2017). Compared with deviant responses, the omission MMN/MMF has similar neural generators, but a slightly different connectivity pattern (Chennu et al, 2016).…”

Towards a neurodynamical understanding of the prodrome in schizophrenia

“…Evidence from computational modeling and EEG/MEG-data suggests that dysfunctional predictive processes may underlie MMN-deficits (Sauer et al 2017;Rentzsch et al 2015;Wacongne 2015).…”