Spectral decomposition of P50 suppression in schizophrenia during concurrent visual processing

Reduced suppression of the auditory P50 event-related potential has long been associated with schizophrenia, but the mechanisms associated with the generation and suppression of the P50 are not well understood. Recent investigations have used spectral decomposition of the electroencephalograph (EEG) signal to gain additional insight into the ongoing electrophysiological activity that may be reflected by the P50 suppression deficit. The present investigation extended this line of study by examining how both a traditional measure of sensory gating and the ongoing EEG from which it is extracted might be modified by the presence of concurrent visual stimulation — perhaps better characterizing gating deficits as they occur in a real-world, complex sensory environment. The EEG was obtained from 18 patients with schizophrenia and 17 healthy control subjects during the P50 suppression paradigm and while identical auditory paired-stimuli were presented concurrently with affectively neutral pictures. Consistent with prior research, schizophrenia patients differed from healthy subjects in gating of power in the theta range; theta activity also was modulated by visual stimulation. In addition, schizophrenia patients showed intact gating but overall increased power in the gamma range, consistent with a model of NMDA receptor dysfunction in the disorder. These results are in line with a model of schizophrenia in which impairments in neural synchrony are related to sensory demands and the processing of multimodal information.