Attention in schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders: Evidence from P300 (original) (raw)

2013

Abstract

Objective: Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and schizophrenia show phenomenological overlap and have been proposed to share a common underlying pathogenesis. We investigate whether both psychopathological conditions can be conceptualized as disorders of attention. Participants and Methods: To examine attentional processing, eventrelated potentials (ERPs) were recorded in an oddball paradigm. Previously, infrequent stimuli in this paradigm elicit a large positivity (P300). P300 has been proposed as the neural signature of the working memory update of changes in the environment. Specifically, variations in P300 latency and amplitude have been taken to reflect differences in the degree and quality of attentional mechanisms required to change the mental model of the environment. In the present ERP experiment, 10 patients with ASD, 10 patients with schizophrenia, and 10 healthy controls were exposed to a visual oddball task (frequent stimulus: large circle; odd stimulus: small circle). All participants were asked to silently count the odd stimuli. Results: A centroparietally distributed P300 effect was elicited for both controls, patients with ASD and schizophrenia. For controls, the P300 effect was more broadly distributed compared to the P300 in ASD patients and schizophrenia patients and was also present at bilateral occipital sites. Conclusions: The smaller scalp distribution of P300 in ASD and schizophrenia could reflect differences in the amount of attentional resources allocated in processing target stimuli. These differences can both be associated with hypervigilance and inattention observed in patients with ASD and schizophrenia. The present ERP findings suggest that both ASD and schizophrenia can be conceptualized as disorders of attention and speak in favor of a common pathogenesis. Future research should reveal whether similar attentional mechanisms also play a role in higher-order cognitive disturbances in both ASD and schizophrenia.

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