Language processing abnormalities in adolescents with psychotic-like experiences: An event related potential study

Abstract

Language impairments are a well established finding in patients with schizophrenia and in individuals at-risk for psychosis. A growing body of research has revealed shared risk factors between individuals with psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) from the general population and patients with schizophrenia. In particular, adolescents with PLEs have been shown to be at an increased risk for later psychosis. However, to date there has been little information published on electrophysiological correlates of language comprehension in this at-risk group. A 64 channel EEG recorded electrical activity while 37 (16 At-Risk; 21 Controls) participants completed the British Picture Vocabulary Scale (BPVS-II) receptive vocabulary task. The P300 component was examined as a function of language comprehension. The at-risk group were impaired behaviourally on receptive language and were characterised by a reduction in P300 amplitude relative to the control group. The results of this study reveal electrophysiological evidence for receptive language deficits in adolescents with PLEs, suggesting that the earliest neurobiological changes underlying psychosis may be apparent in the adolescent period.

Reduced P300 amplitude during retrieval on a spatial working memory task in a community sample of adolescents who report psychotic symptoms

“…Previous research by Murphy et al [63] found reduced amplitude of the P300 component in a group of adolescents who reported psychotic symptoms compared to a control group on a receptive language task. Individuals with psychotic symptoms were characterised by reduced accuracy and smaller P300 amplitude on a computerised version of the British Picture Vocabulary Scale [64].…”

From Phenomenology to Neurophysiological Understanding of Hallucinations in Children and Adolescents

“…preadolescents with psychotic-like experiences with matched healthy controls, an initial set of experiments showed functional changes encompassing the error-related processing network, 83 the perspective-taking network, 84 and the status of intrinsic functional connectivity within the inhibitory control network, 85 in line with behavioral findings previously mentioned (see “ToM in Children With Hallucinations” section). Such differences measured in the blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal—during cognitive tasks and at rest—were shown to be associated with gray matter 83,86 and event-related potentials changes 87 in at-risk or first-episode adolescents compared with controls, supporting a hypothesis of distributed neural impairments associated with the psychosis phenotype in general.…”

Basic Disturbances of Information Processing in Psychosis Prediction

“…Furthermore, neural generators of the MMN have been located in the IFG (66). The P3 might be related to domains involved in language processing as well (78). At least, an intertwining of the P3 with dysfunctions of language comprehension has been found in subjects displaying psychotic-like experiences (78).…”

“…The P3 might be related to domains involved in language processing as well (78). At least, an intertwining of the P3 with dysfunctions of language comprehension has been found in subjects displaying psychotic-like experiences (78). Taken together, it can be hypothesized that the language related BS may be mirrored by particular EEG disturbances that relate to language processing domains, which have been found aberrantly activated in fMRI investigations.…”

“…The P3 has been suggested as a potential marker of illness progression (73), but might more broadly indicate cognitive disturbances (58, 77). A recent investigation demonstrated a relationship between P3 and disturbances in receptive language in subjects displaying psychotic-like experiences (78). The P3 has been demonstrated to relate to frontal and posterior regions, particularly to precentral areas, insula, the parietal, and the inferior temporal cortex (56, 57).…”