Abstract
The use of event-related potential (ERP) recording technology during perceptual and cognitive processing has been studied in order to develop objective diagnostic indexes for people with neuropsychiatric disorders. For example, patients with schizophrenia exhibit consistent abnormalities in face-evoked early components of ERPs and mismatch negativities (MMNs). In most studies, the choice of reference has been the average reference (AVE), but whether this is the most suitable choice is still unknown. The aim of this study was to systematically compare the AVE and reference electrode standardization technique (REST) methods for assessing expressional face-evoked early visual ERPs and visual MMNs (vMMNs) in patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls. The results showed that both the AVE and REST methods could: (1) obtain primary visual-evoked ERPs in the two groups, (2) reveal the neutral and emotional expression discrimination deficit of the P1 component in the patients, which was normal in the healthy controls, (3) reflect reductions of happy vMMNs in the patients compared to the healthy controls, and (4) show right-dominant sad vMMNs only in the patients. On the other hand, compared to the energy distributions of the AVE-obtained potentials, those of REST-obtained early visual ERPs and vMMNs were more concentrated around the temporo-occipital areas. Furthermore, only the REST-obtained vMMNs revealed a significant difference between happy and sad mismatch stimuli in patients with schizophrenia. These results demonstrate that REST technology might provide new insights into neurophysiological factors associated with neuropsychiatric disorders.
Highlights
Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder that is associated with various clinical symptoms such as auditory hallucinations, paranoid delusional thoughts, disorganized thinking, and disturbances of self (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition) (American Psychiatry Association, 1994; Onitsuka et al, 2013)
These results indicated that reference electrode standardization technique (REST)-obtained visual evoked event-related potential (ERP) gave significant temporo-occipital distributions in both schizophrenic patients and healthy controls
Face processing dysfunction has been widely explored in previous studies (Herrmann et al, 2004; Onitsuka et al, 2006; Chen, 2011; Tsunoda et al, 2012; Maher et al, 2015, 2016; Zheng et al, 2016); only a few have compared visual mismatch responses elicited by task-irrelevant facial expressions between healthy controls and patients with schizophrenia (Urban et al, 2008; Csukly et al, 2013)
Summary
Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder that is associated with various clinical symptoms such as auditory hallucinations, paranoid delusional thoughts, disorganized thinking, and disturbances of self (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition) (American Psychiatry Association, 1994; Onitsuka et al, 2013). Many recent studies have shown that people with diagnosis of schizophrenia often exhibit impairments in facial expression recognition, which are suggested to be related to poor social functioning (Michalopoulou et al, 2008; Kohler et al, 2009; Mendoza et al, 2011; Csukly et al, 2013; McCleery et al, 2015). The perception of facial expressions, which provides a fundamental emotional analysis of the mental intention of a person, is found to be abnormal in people with schizophrenia (for review see McCleery et al, 2015). A recent study reveals that the visual mismatch negativities (vMMNs) evoked by changes of facial expressions could be abnormal in schizophrenia (Csukly et al, 2013)
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