Fragile temporal prediction in patients with schizophrenia is related to minimal self disorders
B. Martin, N. Franck, M. Cermolacce, Agnès Falco, Anabel Benair, Estelle Etienne, S. Weibel, J. Coull, A. Giersch
Scientific Reports August 15, 2017 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-07987-y via Semantic Scholar
Summary
Patients with schizophrenia show difficulty using the passage of time to predict when something will happen. In a task with visual cues, both patients and healthy controls responded faster to targets appearing after a long delay versus a short delay, a normal effect of temporal predictability. However, this benefit was absent in patients with high scores on a self-disorder scale, indicating a link between impaired time-based prediction and disturbances of the minimal self. Additionally, patients' reaction times slowed at long intervals when catch trials were present, suggesting fragility in continuously extracting temporal information.
Study at a glance
| Design | observational cohort |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 52 |
| Population | patients with schizophrenia and matched controls |
| Key finding | Patients with schizophrenia have a fragile ability to use the elapsing interval to predict target timing, and this deficit correlates with self-disorder severity. |
Abstract
Patients with schizophrenia have difficulty in making sensory predictions, in the time domain, which have been proposed to be related to self-disorders. However experimental evidence is lacking. We examined both voluntary and automatic forms of temporal prediction in 28 patients and 24 matched controls. A visual cue predicted (temporal cue) or not (neutral cue) the time (400 ms/1000 ms) at which a subsequent target was presented. In both patients and controls, RTs were faster for targets presented after long versus short intervals due to the temporal predictability inherent in the elapse of time (“hazard function”). This RT benefit was correlated with scores on the EASE scale, which measures disorders of the self: patients with a high ‘self-awareness and presence’ score did not show any significant benefit of the hazard function, whereas this ability was preserved in patients with a low score. Moreover, all patients were abnormally sensitive to the presence of “catch” trials (unexpected absence of a target) within a testing block, with RTs actually becoming slower at long versus short intervals. These results indicate fragility in patients’ ability to continuously extract temporally predictive information from the elapsing interval. This deficit might contribute to perturbations of the minimal self in patients.