The positive dimension of schizotypy is associated with a reduced attenuation and precision of self-generated touch

Abstract

The brain predicts the sensory consequences of our movements and uses these predictions to attenuate the perception of self-generated sensations. Accordingly, self-generated touch feels weaker than an externally generated touch of identical intensity. In schizophrenia, this somatosensory attenuation is substantially reduced, suggesting that patients with positive symptoms fail to accurately predict and process self-generated touch. If an impaired prediction underlies the positive symptoms of schizophrenia, then a similar impairment should exist in healthy nonclinical individuals with high positive schizotypal traits. One hundred healthy participants (53 female), assessed for schizotypal traits, underwent a well-established psychophysics force discrimination task to quantify how they perceived self-generated and externally generated touch. The perceived intensity of tactile stimuli delivered to their left index finger (magnitude) and the ability to discriminate the stimuli (precision) was measured. We observed that higher positive schizotypal traits were associated with reduced somatosensory attenuation and poorer somatosensory precision of self-generated touch, both when treating schizotypy as a continuous or categorical variable. These effects were specific to positive schizotypy and were not observed for the negative or disorganized dimensions of schizotypy. The results suggest that positive schizotypal traits are associated with a reduced ability to predict and process self-generated touch. Given that the positive dimension of schizotypy represents the analogue of positive psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia, deficits in processing self-generated tactile information could indicate increased liability to schizophrenia.