Cognitive Event-Related Potential Correlates of Schizophrenia

• Published in: Psychological bulletin 1986-07, Vol.100 (1), p.43-66
• Main Author: Pritchard, Walter S
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acute Disease; Antipsychotic Agents - pharmacology; Biological and medical sciences; Brain - physiopathology; Child; Cognition - physiology; Contingent Negative Variation; Electroencephalography; Evoked Potentials; Evoked Potentials - drug effects; Evoked Potentials, Auditory; Female; Habituation, Psychophysiologic; Human; Humans; Literature Review; Male; Medical disorders; Medical sciences; Miscellaneous; Mood Disorders - physiopathology; Parietal Lobe - physiopathology; Physiological Correlates; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Reaction Time; Schizophrenia; Schizophrenia - physiopathology; Schizophrenia, Paranoid - physiopathology; Social research; Techniques and methods
• ISSN: 0033-2909; 1939-1455
• DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.100.1.43

In this article I review findings relating schizophrenia to four of the leading event-related brain voltage potential (ERP) components of interest to cognitive psychophysiologists. Research indicates that schizophrenics manifest the following cognitive ERP abnormalities relative to control subjects: (a) a diminished contingent negative variation (CNV) in warned reaction time paradigms during the warning stimulus-imperative stimulus interval; this CNV continues beyond presentation of the imperative stimulus as the postimperative negative variation (PINV). Contingent negative variation attenuation may reflect a state marker of psychosis in acute schizophrenics, whereas serving as a trait marker regardless of current symptoms in more chronic patients. In contrast, the PINV may be more of a state marker for both acute and chronic patients. (b) A pattern of P100-N100 reducing in acute schizophrenics that is not seen in chronic and paranoid patients. (c) Evidence of an attenuated enhancement of N100 (actually superimposed Nd or processing negativity) to stimuli presented in an attended channel, especially at slower event rates. (d) A diminished late positive complex (LPC) apparently due more to a diminished P300 than a diminished slow wave. The LPC attenuation in schizophrenics may to a degree reflect a trait marker of high risk for schizophrenia as well as a residual deficit state that often remains following the remission of positive symptoms. (e) Finally, with the possible exception of the PINV elicited in standard CNV paradigms, these ERP abnormalities do not appear to be specific to schizophrenia, as they are found in association with a variety of other disorders as well. The implication of each of these abnormalities for the conceptualization of the schizophrenic disorder is discussed, as is the "impaired performance" problem associated with doing ERP research with clinical groups.