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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Schizophrenia
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1492266
This article is part of the Research Topic Underlying Neurobiological, Genetic, and Behavioral Mechanisms in Schizophrenia and Autism Spectrum Disorder View all 8 articles

Neural correlates of audiovisual integration in schizophrenia -an ERP study

Provisionally accepted
Anna Borgolte Anna Borgolte 1*Christopher Sinke Christopher Sinke 1Laura Michalke Laura Michalke 1Nicole Lepsy Nicole Lepsy 1Laura Möde Laura Möde 1Daniel Wiswede Daniel Wiswede 2Stefan Bleich Stefan Bleich 1,3Gregor R Szycik Gregor R Szycik 1Erfan Ghaneirad Erfan Ghaneirad 1
  • 1 Department of Psychiatry, Social Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Hannover Medical School, Hanover, Germany
  • 2 Department of Neurology, University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
  • 3 Center for Systems Neuroscience, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Hannover, Lower Saxony, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Multisensory integration (MSI) enhances perception by combining information from different sensory modalities. In schizophrenia, individuals often exhibit impaired audiovisual processing, resulting in broader temporal binding windows (TBWs) which appear to be associated with symptom severity. Since the underlying mechanisms of these aberrations are not yet fully understood, the present study aims to investigate multisensory processing in schizophrenia in more detail. Individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) and healthy controls (HC) performed a simultaneity judgement task, a paradigm that is suitable for the examination of multisensory integration processes. The paradigm was also conducted to allow for the comparison of perceptions under ecologically valid and invalid conditions. Additionally, EEG recordings were made to explore underlying neural mechanisms. In line with previous research, we replicated enlarged TBWs in SZ compared to HC, independent of ecological validity. Neurophysiological data further revealed reduced amplitudes in the early ERP complex N1/P2 in SZ compared to HC. Since amplitude reduction in the N1/P2 complex is often associated with audiovisual integration processes, the results highlight perceptual dysfunction in SZ, particularly concerning the disengagement of auditory and visual stimuli.

    Keywords: Schizophrenia, ERP, Audiovisual integration, simultaneity judgement, EEG, multisensory perception

    Received: 06 Sep 2024; Accepted: 18 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Borgolte, Sinke, Michalke, Lepsy, Möde, Wiswede, Bleich, Szycik and Ghaneirad. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Anna Borgolte, Department of Psychiatry, Social Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Hannover Medical School, Hanover, Germany

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