Abstract
BackgroundPrevious studies have demonstrated functional and structural temporal lobe abnormalities located close to the auditory cortical regions in schizophrenia. The goal of this study was to determine whether functional abnormalities exist in the cortical processing of musical sound in schizophrenia.MethodsTwelve schizophrenic patients and twelve age- and sex-matched healthy controls were recruited, and participants listened to a random sequence of two kinds of sonic entities, intervals (tritones and perfect fifths) and chords (atonal chords, diminished chords, and major triads), of varying degrees of complexity and consonance. The perception of musical sound was investigated by the auditory evoked potentials technique.ResultsOur results showed that schizophrenic patients exhibited significant reductions in the amplitudes of the N1 and P2 components elicited by musical stimuli, to which consonant sounds contributed more significantly than dissonant sounds. Schizophrenic patients could not perceive the dissimilarity between interval and chord stimuli based on the evoked potentials responses as compared with the healthy controls.ConclusionThis study provided electrophysiological evidence of functional abnormalities in the cortical processing of sound complexity and music consonance in schizophrenia. The preliminary findings warrant further investigations for the underlying mechanisms.
Highlights
Previous studies have demonstrated functional and structural temporal lobe abnormalities located close to the auditory cortical regions in schizophrenia
The most replicated findings include a reduction in the amplitude of the P3 component (P300) [8,9], failure to inhibit the second response to paired-click stimuli (p50) [10,11] and a gating deficit in N1(N100) and P2 component (P200) [12,13,14]; most prior research was limited by a reliance on simple oddball tasks, which requested that subjects detect auditory targets in a string of pure tonal stimuli [7]
Schizophrenia diagnoses were confirmed according to the DSM-IV criteria on the basis of a clinical interview and a review of the case files, and degrees of psychopathological symptoms were evaluated by a semi-structured interview using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) [18]
Summary
Previous studies have demonstrated functional and structural temporal lobe abnormalities located close to the auditory cortical regions in schizophrenia. The most replicated findings include a reduction in the amplitude of the P3 component (P300) [8,9], failure to inhibit the second response to paired-click stimuli (p50) [10,11] and a gating deficit in N1(N100) and P2 component (P200) [12,13,14]; most prior research was limited by a reliance on simple oddball tasks, which requested that subjects detect auditory targets in a string of pure tonal stimuli [7] These abnormal auditory processing results cannot demonstrate deficits in the perceptive processing of musical sound [3]. The phenomenon of cortical processing of musical sound in schizophrenia, which is close to the real-world experience of music, remains poorly understood, and has been discussed only rarely in related research to date
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