Abstract
sBackgroundSpeech recognition under noisy “cocktail-party” environments involves multiple perceptual/cognitive processes, including target detection, selective attention, irrelevant signal inhibition, sensory/working memory, and speech production. Compared to health listeners, people with schizophrenia are more vulnerable to masking stimuli and perform worse in speech recognition under speech-on-speech masking conditions. Although the schizophrenia-related speech-recognition impairment under “cocktail-party” conditions is associated with deficits of various perceptual/cognitive processes, it is crucial to know whether the brain substrates critically underlying speech detection against informational speech masking are impaired in people with schizophrenia.MethodsUsing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), this study investigated differences between people with schizophrenia (n = 19, mean age = 33 ± 10 years) and their matched healthy controls (n = 15, mean age = 30 ± 9 years) in intra-network functional connectivity (FC) specifically associated with target-speech detection under speech-on-speech-masking conditions.ResultsThe target-speech detection performance under the speech-on-speech-masking condition in participants with schizophrenia was significantly worse than that in matched healthy participants (healthy controls). Moreover, in healthy controls, but not participants with schizophrenia, the strength of intra-network FC within the bilateral caudate was positively correlated with the speech-detection performance under the speech-masking conditions. Compared to controls, patients showed altered spatial activity pattern and decreased intra-network FC in the caudate.ConclusionsIn people with schizophrenia, the declined speech-detection performance under speech-on-speech masking conditions is associated with reduced intra-caudate functional connectivity, which normally contributes to detecting target speech against speech masking via its functions of suppressing masking-speech signals.
Highlights
Speech recognition under noisy “cocktail-party” environments involves multiple perceptual/cognitive processes, including target detection, selective attention, irrelevant signal inhibition, sensory/working memory, and speech production
In people with schizophrenia, the declined speech-detection performance under speech-on-speech masking conditions is associated with reduced intra-caudate functional connectivity, which normally contributes to detecting target speech against speech masking via its functions of suppressing masking-speech signals
The augmented vulnerability to speech masking in people with schizophrenia may be associated with deficits of various perceptual/cognitive processes [5,6,7, 11,12,13,14], it is the most important of all to know whether deficits in speech detection are the primary cause leading to deficits of speech recognition against informational speech masking
Summary
Speech recognition under noisy “cocktail-party” environments involves multiple perceptual/cognitive processes, including target detection, selective attention, irrelevant signal inhibition, sensory/working memory, and speech production. People with schizophrenia are more vulnerable to masking stimuli and perform worse in speech recognition under speech-on-speech masking conditions. The schizophrenia-related speech-recognition impairment under “cocktail-party” conditions is associated with deficits of various perceptual/cognitive processes, it is crucial to know whether the brain substrates critically underlying speech detection against informational speech masking are impaired in people with schizophrenia. The brain substrates underlying the schizophrenia-related augmentation of the vulnerability of speech recognition against informational speech masking remain largely unknown. Successful speech recognition under a speech-onspeech-masking condition involves multiple perceptual/ cognitive processes, including target-speech detection, selective attention, sensory/working memory, and speech production. The underlying mechanisms have not been reported in the literature
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