Predictive timing disturbance is a precise marker of schizophrenia

Publication date: June 2018Source: Schizophrenia Research: Cognition, Volume 12Author(s): Valentina Ciullo, Federica Piras, Daniela Vecchio, Nerisa Banaj, Jennifer T. Coull, Gianfranco SpallettaAbstractTiming disturbances have being proposed as a key component of schizophrenia pathogenesis. However, the contribution of cognitive impairment to such disorders has not been clarified. Here, we investigated duration estimation and predictive timing in 30 patients with DSM-5 diagnosis of schizophrenia (SZ) compared to 30 healthy controls (HC). Duration estimation was examined in a temporal and colour discrimination task, fully controlled for working memory (WM) and attention requirements, and by more traditional temporal production and temporal bisection tasks. Predictive timing was measured in a temporal and spatial orienting of attention task. Expectations about stimulus onset (temporal condition) or location (spatial condition) were induced by valid and invalid symbolic cues. Results showed that discrimination of temporal and colour stimulus attributes was equally impaired in SZ. This, taken with the positive correlation between temporal bisection performance and neuropsychological measures of WM, indicates that duration estimation impairments in SZ are underpinned by WM dysfunction. Conversely, we found dissociation in temporal and spatial predictive ability in SZ. Unlike controls, patients were selectively unperturbed by events appearing at an unexpected moment in time, though...

Source: Schizophrenia Research: Cognition - July 5, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Source Type: research