Disturbances in Response Inhibition and Emotional Processing as Potential Pathways to Violence in Schizophrenia: A High-Density Event-Related Potential Study

OBJECTIVE: Increased susceptibility to emotional triggers and poor response inhibition are important in the etiology of violence in schizophrenia. Our goal was to evaluate abnormalities in neurophysiological mechanisms underlying response inhibition and emotional processing in violent patients with schizophrenia (VS) and 3 different comparison groups: nonviolent patients (NV), healthy controls (HC) and nonpsychotic violent subjects (NPV). METHODS: We recorded high-density Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) and behavioral responses during an Emotional Go/NoGo Task in 35 VS, 24 NV, 28 HC and 31 NPV subjects. We also evaluated psychiatric symptoms and impulsivity. RESULTS: The neural and behavioral deficits in violent patients were most pronounced when they were presented with negative emotional stimuli: They responded more quickly than NV when they made commission errors (ie, failure of inhibition), and evidenced N2 increases and P3 decreases. In contrast, NVs showed little change in reaction time or ERP amplitude with emotional stimuli. These N2 and P3 amplitude changes in VSs showed a strong association with greater impulsivity. Besides these group specific changes, VSs shared deficits with NV, mostly N2 reduction, and with violent nonpsychotic subjects, particularly P3 reduction. CONCLUSION: Negative affective triggers have a strong impact on violent patients with schizophrenia which may have both behavioral and neural manifestations. The resulting activation could interfere with response inhibition. The affective disruption of response inhibition, identified in this study, may index an important pathway to violence in schizophrenia and suggest new modes of treatment

Diverse definitions of the early course of schizophrenia - a targeted literature review

Schizophrenia is a debilitating psychiatric disorder and patients experience significant comorbidity, especially cognitive and psychosocial deficits, already at the onset of disease. Previous research suggests that treatment during the earlier stages of disease reduces disease burden, and that a longer time of untreated psychosis has a negative impact on treatment outcomes. A targeted literature review was conducted to gain insight into the definitions currently used to describe patients with a recent diagnosis of schizophrenia in the early course of disease ('early' schizophrenia). A total of 483 relevant English-language publications of clinical guidelines and studies were identified for inclusion after searches of MEDLINE, MEDLINE In-Process, relevant clinical trial databases and Google for records published between January 2005 and October 2015. The extracted data revealed a wide variety of terminology and definitions used to describe patients with 'early' or 'recent-onset' schizophrenia, with no apparent consensus. The most commonly used criteria to define patients with early schizophrenia included experience of their first episode of schizophrenia or disease duration of less than 1, 2 or 5 years. These varied definitions likely result in substantial disparities of patient populations between studies and variable population heterogeneity. Better agreement on the definition of early schizophrenia could aid interpretation and comparison of studies in this patient population and consensus on definitions should allow for better identification and management of schizophrenia patients in the early course of their disease

Apparent time changes in the phonological forms and pragmatic use of because in Bolton, Lancashire English

International audienceThe present contribution intends to analyse patterns of full and reduced forms of because inLancashire (Bolton) English, as observed in its ca. 300 occurrences in the semi-guided andfree conversations in the corpus of spoken Lancashire English of the PAC project (Carr,Durand & Pukli 2004, Durand & Pukli 2004). This component of the PAC project, collectedon the networking principle used by Labov and the Milroys in various studies and recorded inlate 2002, comprises recordings from 10 speakers (1 male and 9 females) between 23 and 83years of age, with the interviews running to a total of 5 hours. While the data can be regardedas relatively small, they are varied enough to make sense of the observable patterns in termsof apparent-time changes, both as far as the phonological variants of because and itspragmatic uses are concerned.It will be demonstrated that the distribution of the phonological variants showschanges in apparent time. Firstly, the oldest speaker did not use monosyllabic forms at allwhile the two next oldest speakers still did not have the same range of variants as middle-agedand youngest speakers in the corpus did. Secondly, even the occurrence and distribution ofmonosyllabic forms confirms an apparent-time change in the corpus. The LPD (Wells 2008)lists variants across standard varieties that can differ according to 4 factors: the identity of thestressed vowel: /ɒ ɔ: ʌ ɑ:/ (even /ə/!); the voicing of the final sibilant: /s/ vs. /z/; the amount ofreduction in the unstressed vowel: /ə i/; and mono- or disyllabicity. Corpus data from Boltonreveal, beyond the variants just mentioned, further reduced variants. A variant [bʊ'kɒz], with alabial, or at least labial-coloured, unstressed vowel, occurs a few times in one speaker in themore formal semi-guided interview. In the same type of dialogue, a curious variant [tə'kɒz]occurs in another speaker a number of times. Finally, the data clearly show that thedistribution of mono- and disyllabic forms does not depend either on speech rate or on theinformality of the context: in other words, this variation is not a fast speech reduction process.From a pragmatic point of view, because occurs in various discourse functions, not allof which are found equally across different ages. This also points towards changes in apparenttime. For example, the discourse progression structure A–because B–so A' (described byPassot 2007 based on another spoken corpus of RP) is virtually absent in the data from olderspeakers in Bolton. Corpus data further reveal occurrences of a modified template for thisstructure, apparently not discussed in the literature so far, where A' is supplied by theconversation partner. Finally, younger speakers frequently use because to elicit furtherinformation on the topic under discussion (absent from middle-aged and younger speakers)and use 'style disjuncts' (Quirk et al. 1985:615) much more readily to ''[define] in some wayunder what conditions [they are] speaking as the 'authority' of the utterance''.ReferencesCarr, Philip, Jacques Durand & Monika Pukli. 2004. PAC project: Principles and Methods. InLa Tribune Internationale des Langues Vivantes (TILV), Vol. 36: 24-35.Durand, J. & M. Pukli. 2004. How to construct a phonological corpus: PRAAT and the PACproject. Tribune Internationale des Langues Vivantes (TILV), Vol. 36: 36-46.Passot, Frederique. 2007. A because B so A'. Circularity and discourse progression inconversational English. In: Agnes Celle & Ruth Huart (eds.) Connectives as DiscourseLandmarks. John Benjamins Amsterdam/Philadelphia. pp.117-134.Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, Jan Svartvik. 1985. A ComprehensiveGrammar of the English Language. Longman, London and New York

Effects of musical tempi on visual attention ERPS

The purpose of this work was to examine whether fast and slow musical tempi have different effects on selective attention evaluated through ERPs and task performance. A high demanding visual selective attention task was performed by the subjects: without music (BL) and with Bach's music in slow (ST) and fast tempi (FT). Difference waves were obtained substracting non-target from target. FT caused a reduction in reaction time and N2d and P3d latencies and in P3d amplitude. N2d latency was longer in ST than BL and FT. Music played in FT induced a faster stimuli evaluation and response than ST

Evaluation of Psilocybe cubensis (Agaricales, Basidiomycota) toxicity over Artemia franciscana (Crustacea, Anostraca) [Evaluación de la toxicidad de Psilocybe cubensis (Agaricales, Basidiomycota) sobre Artemia franciscana (Crustacea, Anostraca)]

Impairments in emotional recognition have been consistently reported in schizophrenic patients. The main aim of the present study was to evaluate time-sequenced responses in ERPs and event-related oscillations during emotional recognition of happiness and fear compared to facial identity recognition in schizophrenic patients (SCH) versus healthy controls (CON). Ten paranoid SCH and ten CON subjects performed three oddball paradigm tasks, evaluating face identity recognition and facial emotional recognition of happiness and fear. Event-related potentials and event-related theta and alpha oscillations were obtained for each task. N170 and P2 components appeared with higher amplitude in SCH than in CON at the occipital locations. An early prefrontally distributed P3a component was observed while doing the identity task with lower amplitude in SCH than in CON. Comparatively, P3b amplitude was lower in SCH than in CON over parietal leads in the identity and happiness tasks. Additionally, theta oscillations showed significantly lower RMS values in SCH between 250 and 500 ms post-stimuli in frontal and central regions. On the other hand, the grand-averaged alpha oscillations demonstrated higher RMS values in the occipital leads in SCH compared to CON and the opposite over the frontal regions. Results are interpreted in the framework of a functional disruption in the distributed neuronal networks involved both in facial identity and emotional recognition in schizophrenics as indexed by the brain oscillatory activity and related ERP components. " 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.",,,,,,"10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2008.07.008",,,"http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12104/41359","http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-58149314356&partnerID=40&md5=874bdf0c7cfc98ca11413affb7f3026

Event-related potentials and event-related oscillations during identity and facial emotional processing in schizophrenia

Impairments in emotional recognition have been consistently reported in schizophrenic patients. The main aim of the present study was to evaluate time-sequenced responses in ERPs and event-related oscillations during emotional recognition of happiness and fear compared to facial identity recognition in schizophrenic patients (SCH) versus healthy controls (CON). Ten paranoid SCH and ten CON subjects performed three oddball paradigm tasks, evaluating face identity recognition and facial emotional recognition of happiness and fear. Event-related potentials and event-related theta and alpha oscillations were obtained for each task. N170 and P2 components appeared with higher amplitude in SCH than in CON at the occipital locations. An early prefrontally distributed P3a component was observed while doing the identity task with lower amplitude in SCH than in CON. Comparatively, P3b amplitude was lower in SCH than in CON over parietal leads in the identity and happiness tasks. Additionally, theta oscillations showed significantly lower RMS values in SCH between 250 and 500\ua0ms post-stimuli in frontal and central regions. On the other hand, the grand-averaged alpha oscillations demonstrated higher RMS values in the occipital leads in SCH compared to CON and the opposite over the frontal regions. Results are interpreted in the framework of a functional disruption in the distributed neuronal networks involved both in facial identity and emotional recognition in schizophrenics as indexed by the brain oscillatory activity and related ERP components. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved