Psychophysiological measures of sensory attenuation to self-generated actions: a biomarker for schizophrenia?
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1
University of New South Wales, School of Psychology, Australia
Aims: Sensations which arise as a result of our own actions – such as the sound of our voice when we speak, or the sound of our fingertips on the keyboard – evoke less activity in the EEG compared to physically identical sensations that are externally-generated. This phenomenon, dubbed ‘sensory attenuation’, suggests that our brain predicts and suppresses the sensory consequences of our own movements. There is now a substantial body of evidence indicating that patients with schizophrenia show subnormal levels of sensory attenuation.
Method: This presentation will provide an introduction to the electrophysiological paradigms which have been used to identify sensory attenuation in healthy individuals. It will also provide an overview of the evidence for sensory attenuation deficits in patients with schizophrenia, and also recent evidence for sensory attenuation abnormalities in high-risk populations.
Results: As will be discussed, there is now strong evidence that patients with schizophrenia show sensory attenuation deficits to self-generated sounds. It is less clear whether these deficits extend to other sensory domains (e.g., vision).
Discussion: Sensory attenuation deficits are highly significant as they are uniquely capable of accounting for schizophrenia patients’ characteristic tendency to misattribute self-generated actions to external agents. If sensory attenuation deficits are found to be specific to sounds in patients with schizophrenia, this may explain why auditory hallucinations are more common than hallucinations in other sensory domains.
Acknowledgements
Thomas Whitford is supported by a Career Development Fellowship from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (APP1090507), and two Discovery Projects from the Australian Research Council (DP140104394; DP170103094).
Keywords:
corollary discharge,
efference copy,
Schizophrenia,
Sensory Attenuation,
Event Related Potentials,
Auditory Evoked Potentials,
N1
Conference:
ASP2016 - The 26th Annual Meeting of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology, Adelaide Australia, Adelaide,SA, Australia, 12 Dec - 14 Dec, 2016.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation
Topic:
Abstract (general)
Citation:
Whitford
TJ
(2016). Psychophysiological measures of sensory attenuation to self-generated actions: a biomarker for schizophrenia?.
Conference Abstract:
ASP2016 - The 26th Annual Meeting of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology, Adelaide Australia.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2016.221.00009
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Received:
13 Nov 2016;
Published Online:
05 Dec 2016.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Thomas J Whitford, University of New South Wales, School of Psychology, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia, t.whitford@unsw.edu.au