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Auditory Processing (auditory + processing)
Terms modified by Auditory Processing Selected AbstractsThe relative contributions of the Cattell-Horn-Carroll cognitive abilities in explaining writing achievement during childhood and adolescence,PSYCHOLOGY IN THE SCHOOLS, Issue 2 2008Randy G. Floyd This study examined the relative contributions of measures of Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) cognitive abilities in explaining writing achievement. Drawing from samples that covered the age range of 7 to 18 years, simultaneous multiple regression was used to regress scores from the Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ III; Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001) that represent CHC broad and narrow abilities onto the WJ III Basic Writing Skills and Written Expression cluster scores. At most age levels, Comprehension-Knowledge demonstrated moderate to strong effects on both writing clusters, Processing Speed demonstrated moderate effects on Basic Writing Skills and moderate to strong effects on Written Expression, and Short-Term Memory demonstrated moderate effects. At the youngest age levels, Long-Term Retrieval demonstrated moderate to strong effects on Basic Writing Skills and moderate effects on Written Expression. Auditory Processing, and Phonemic Awareness demonstrated moderate effects on only Written Expression at the youngest age levels and at some of the oldest age levels. Fluid Reasoning demonstrated moderate effects on both writing clusters only during some of the oldest age levels. Visual-Spatial Thinking primarily demonstrated negligible effects. The results provide insights into the cognitive abilities most important for understanding the writing skills of children during the school-age years. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] Relations between measures of Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) cognitive abilities and mathematics achievement across the school-age yearsPSYCHOLOGY IN THE SCHOOLS, Issue 2 2003RANDY G. FLOYD Cognitive clusters from the Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ III) Tests of Cognitive Abilities that measure select Cattell-Horn-Carroll broad and narrow cognitive abilities were shown to be significantly related to mathematics achievement in a large, nationally representative sample of children and adolescents. Multiple regression analyses were used to predict performance on the Math Calculation Skills and Math Reasoning clusters from the WJ III Tests of Achievement for 14 age groups ranging in age from 6 to 19 years. Comprehension-Knowledge (Gc) demonstrated moderate relations with Math Calculation Skills after the early school-age years and moderate to strong relations with Math Reasoning. Fluid Reasoning (Gf), Short-term Memory (Gsm), and Working Memory generally demonstrated moderate relations with the mathematics clusters. Processing Speed (Gs) demonstrated moderate relations with Math Reasoning during the elementary school years and moderate to strong relations with Math Calculation Skills. During the earliest ages of the analysis, Long-term Retrieval (Glr) demonstrated moderate relations with the mathematics clusters, and Auditory Processing (Ga) demonstrated moderate relations with Math Calculation Skills. Visual-Spatial Thinking (Gv) generally demonstrated nonsignificant relations with the mathematics clusters. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 40: 155,171, 2003. [source] Developmental Differences in Visual and Auditory Processing of Complex SentencesCHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 4 2000James R. Booth Children aged 8 through 11 (N= 250) were given a word-by-word sentence task in both the visual and auditory modes. The sentences included an object relative clause, a subject relative clause, or a conjoined verb phrase. Each sentence was followed by a true,false question, testing the subject of either the first or second verb. Participants were also given two memory span measures: digit span and reading span. High digit span children slowed down more at the transition from the main to the relative clause than did the low digit span children. The findings suggest the presence of a U-shaped learning pattern for on-line processing of restrictive relative clauses. Off-line accuracy scores showed different patterns for good comprehenders and poor comprehenders. Poor comprehenders answered the second verb questions at levels that were consistently below chance. Their answers were based on an incorrect local attachment strategy that treated the second noun as the subject of the second verb. For example, they often answered yes to the question ,The girl chases the policeman' after the object relative sentence ,The boy that the girl sees chases the policeman.' Interestingly, low memory span poor comprehenders used the local attachment strategy less consistently than high memory span poor comprehenders, and all poor comprehenders used this strategy less consistently for harder than for easier sentences. [source] Age-related changes in transient and oscillatory brain responses to auditory stimulation during early adolescenceDEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2009Catherine Poulsen Maturational changes in the capacity to process quickly the temporal envelope of sound have been linked to language abilities in typically developing individuals. As part of a longitudinal study of brain maturation and cognitive development during adolescence, we employed dense-array EEG and spatiotemporal source analysis to characterize maturational changes in the timing of brain responses to temporal variations in sound. We found significant changes in the brain responses compared longitudinally at two time points in early adolescence, namely 10 years (65 subjects) and 11.5 years (60 of the 65 subjects), as well as large differences between adults, studied with the same protocol (Poulsen, Picton & Paus, 2007), and the children at 10 and 11.5 years of age. The transient auditory evoked potential to tone onset showed decreases in the latency of vertex and T-complex components, and a highly significant increase in the amplitude of the N1 wave with increasing age. The auditory steady state response to a 40-Hz frequency-modulated tone increased in amplitude with increasing age. The peak frequency of the envelope-following response to sweeps of amplitude-modulated white noise also increased significantly with increasing age. These results indicate persistent maturation of the cortical mechanisms for auditory processing from childhood into middle adulthood. [source] Evidence for reduced domain-specificity in auditory processing in autismDEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, Issue 6 2007Anna Järvinen-Pasley Neurological and behavioral findings indicate that atypical auditory processing characterizes autism. The present study tested the hypothesis that auditory processing is less domain-specific in autism than in typical development. Participants with autism and controls completed a pitch sequence discrimination task in which same/different judgments of music and/or speech stimulus pairs were made. A signal detection analysis showed no difference in pitch sensitivity across conditions in the autism group, while controls exhibited significantly poorer performance in conditions incorporating speech. The results are largely consistent with perceptual theories of autism, which propose that a processing bias towards featural/low-level information characterizes the disorder, as well as supporting the notion that such individuals exhibit selective attention to a limited number of simultaneously presented cues. [source] Immature cortical responses to auditory stimuli in specific language impairment: evidence from ERPs to rapid tone sequencesDEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, Issue 4 2004D.V.M. Bishop Event-related potentials (ERPs) to tone pairs and single tones were measured for 16 participants with specific language impairment (SLI) and 16 age-matched controls aged from 10 to 19 years. The tone pairs were separated by an inter-stimulus interval (ISI) of 20, 50 or 150 ms. The intraclass correlation (ICC) was computed for each participant between the ERP to a single tone and the ERP to the tone pair. A high ICC indicates that the brain response to a tone pair is similar to that for a single tone. ICCs were significantly higher at short than at long ISIs. At 50-ms ISI, ICCs were higher for younger than older participants. Age and ISI interacted with SLI status: ERPs of older participants with SLI differed from age-matched controls, and resembled ERPs of younger controls, consistent with a theory of immature auditory processing in SLI. [source] Low-level defective processing of non-verbal sounds in dyslexic childrenDYSLEXIA, Issue 2 2009Paulino Uclés Abstract We compared processing of non-verbal auditory stimuli by dyslexic and non-dyslexic children using electrophysiological methods. The study included 39 children (17 with dyslexia plus 22 controls) assessed via frontal, central, parietal, and temporal electrodes. As an extension of previous P300 event-related potential studies, we analysed variations in the power values of 40-Hz oscillations (gamma-band oscillations involved in cognitive processing) during a specific time window in response to the auditory ,oddball' paradigm that entail target (random 2,kHz) and standard (frequent 1,kHz) stimuli. Dyslexic children differed significantly from controls (P<0.001) in the mean power of the wavelet-transformed 40-Hz oscillation in a time interval starting at 25 ms after stimulus onset up to 50 ms. This means defective processing of sounds. Within groups, standard and target tones elicited significantly different power values (P<0.001). Correlations of values between standard and target responses at each electrode position were not significant within either group, although dyslexics showed a lower correlation than controls. Significant differences in the mean power of these oscillations detected at very early stages of auditory processing in dyslexic children and the wide range of mean values reveal impairment in processing non-verbal sounds in dyslexia. Our results also support recent findings using behavioural and electrophysiological methods suggesting that dyslexia is a general auditory deficit instead of a speech-specific deficit. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Auditory temporal processing deficits in children with reading disabilitiesDYSLEXIA, Issue 3 2007Ravit Cohen-Mimran Abstract The role of central auditory processing in reading skill development and reading disorders is unclear. The purpose of this study was to examine whether individuals with specific reading disabilities (SRD) have deficits in processing rapidly presented, serially ordered non-speech auditory signals. To this end, we compared 12 children with SRD and 12 children without SRD on their ability to detect differences and similarities in pure tones of 1000 and 2000 Hz when these signals were presented in pairs (same or different tones, randomly ordered) with short (50 ms) versus long (500 ms) inter stimulous intervals (ISI). Results showed that the children with SRD had significant difficulty in discriminating between pure tones with short, but not long ISI, whereas the controls performed well with both short and long ISI. The two groups did not differ significantly on measures of attention (d2) and performance IQ, and there were no significant correlations between these measures and ISI performance. There were significant correlations between the short ISI performance and phonologic awareness test results when the two groups were combined. These findings support the specific rapid auditory processing deficit hypothesis of SRD. Examination of intra-subject variability in performance indicated that children from the SRD group showed both decrement in performance with time on task and high overall variability in performance as compared to the controls. These findings underpin the importance of using time-series analyses of performance. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] On the development of low-level auditory discrimination and deficits in dyslexiaDYSLEXIA, Issue 2 2004Burkhart Fischer Abstract Absolute auditory thresholds, frequency resolution and temporal resolution develop with age. It is still discussed whether low-level auditory performance is of clinical significance,specifically, for delayed maturation of central auditory processing. Recently, five new auditory tasks were used to study the development of low-level auditory discrimination. It was found that the development lasts up to the age of 16,18 years (on an average). Very similar tasks were now used with 432 controls and 250 dyslexic subjects in the age range of 7,22 years. For both groups the performance in one of the tasks was not related to the performance in another task indicating that the five tasks challenge independent subfunctions of auditory processing. Surprisingly high numbers of subjects were classified as low performers (LP), because they could not perform one or the other task at its easiest level and no threshold value could be assigned. For the dyslexics the incidence of LP was considerably increased in all tasks and age groups as compared with the age matched controls. The development of dynamic visual and optomotor functions and the corresponding deficits in dyslexia are discussed in relation to the auditory data presented here. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] On the relationship between dynamic visual and auditory processing and literacy skills; results from a large primary-school studyDYSLEXIA, Issue 4 2002Joel B. Talcott Abstract Three hundred and fifty randomly selected primary school children completed a psychometric and psychophysical test battery to ascertain relationships between reading ability and sensitivity to dynamic visual and auditory stimuli. The first analysis examined whether sensitivity to visual coherent motion and auditory frequency resolution differed between groups of children with different literacy and cognitive skills. For both tasks, a main effect of literacy group was found in the absence of a main effect for intelligence or an interaction between these factors. To assess the potential confounding effects of attention, a second analysis of the frequency discrimination data was conducted with performance on catch trials entered as a covariate. Significant effects for both the covariate and literacy skill was found, but again there was no main effect of intelligence, nor was there an interaction between intelligence and literacy skill. Regression analyses were conducted to determine the magnitude of the relationship between sensory and literacy skills in the entire sample. Both visual motion sensitivity and auditory sensitivity to frequency differences were robust predictors of children's literacy skills and their orthographic and phonological skills. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] A comparison of five fMRI protocols for mapping speech comprehension systemsEPILEPSIA, Issue 12 2008Jeffrey R. Binder Summary Aims:, Many fMRI protocols for localizing speech comprehension have been described, but there has been little quantitative comparison of these methods. We compared five such protocols in terms of areas activated, extent of activation, and lateralization. Methods:, fMRI BOLD signals were measured in 26 healthy adults during passive listening and active tasks using words and tones. Contrasts were designed to identify speech perception and semantic processing systems. Activation extent and lateralization were quantified by counting activated voxels in each hemisphere for each participant. Results:, Passive listening to words produced bilateral superior temporal activation. After controlling for prelinguistic auditory processing, only a small area in the left superior temporal sulcus responded selectively to speech. Active tasks engaged an extensive, bilateral attention, and executive processing network. Optimal results (consistent activation and strongly lateralized pattern) were obtained by contrasting an active semantic decision task with a tone decision task. There was striking similarity between the network of brain regions activated by the semantic task and the network of brain regions that showed task-induced deactivation, suggesting that semantic processing occurs during the resting state. Conclusions:, fMRI protocols for mapping speech comprehension systems differ dramatically in pattern, extent, and lateralization of activation. Brain regions involved in semantic processing were identified only when an active, nonlinguistic task was used as a baseline, supporting the notion that semantic processing occurs whenever attentional resources are not controlled. Identification of these lexical-semantic regions is particularly important for predicting language outcome in patients undergoing temporal lobe surgery. [source] Attenuated human auditory middle latency response and evoked 40-Hz response to self-initiated soundsEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE, Issue 7 2009Pamela Baess Abstract For several modalities, it has been shown that the processing of sensory information generated by our own actions is attenuated relative to the processing of sensory information of externally generated stimuli. It has been proposed that the underlying mechanism builds predictions about the forthcoming sensory input and forwards them to the respective sensory processing levels. The present study investigated whether early auditory processing is suppressed by the top-down influences of such an internal forward model mechanism. To this end, we compared auditory middle latency responses (MLRs) and evoked 40-Hz responses elicited by self-initiated sounds with those elicited by externally initiated but otherwise identical sounds. In the self-initiated condition, the amplitudes of the Pa (27,33 ms relative to sound onset) and Nb (40,46 ms) components of the MLRs were significantly attenuated when compared to the responses elicited by click sounds presented in the externally initiated condition. Similarly, the evoked activity in the 40-Hz and adjacent frequency bands was attenuated. Considering that previous research revealed subcortical and auditory cortex contributions to MLRs and 40-Hz responses, our results support the existence of auditory suppression effects with self-initiated sounds on temporally and structurally early auditory processing levels. This attenuation in the processing of self-initiated sounds most probably contributes to the optimal processing of concurrent external acoustic events. [source] Common and distinct neural substrates for the perception of speech rhythm and intonationHUMAN BRAIN MAPPING, Issue 7 2010Linjun Zhang Abstract The present study examines the neural substrates for the perception of speech rhythm and intonation. Subjects listened passively to synthesized speech stimuli that contained no semantic and phonological information, in three conditions: (1) continuous speech stimuli with fixed syllable duration and fundamental frequency in the standard condition, (2) stimuli with varying vocalic durations of syllables in the speech rhythm condition, and (3) stimuli with varying fundamental frequency in the intonation condition. Compared to the standard condition, speech rhythm activated the right middle superior temporal gyrus (mSTG), whereas intonation activated the bilateral superior temporal gyrus and sulcus (STG/STS) and the right posterior STS. Conjunction analysis further revealed that rhythm and intonation activated a common area in the right mSTG but compared to speech rhythm, intonation elicited additional activations in the right anterior STS. Findings from the current study reveal that the right mSTG plays an important role in prosodic processing. Implications of our findings are discussed with respect to neurocognitive theories of auditory processing. Hum Brain Mapp, 2010. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Assessing the influence of scanner background noise on auditory processing.HUMAN BRAIN MAPPING, Issue 8 2007Abstract We compared two experimental designs aimed at minimizing the influence of scanner background noise (SBN) on functional MRI (fMRI) of auditory processes with one conventional fMRI design. Ten subjects listened to a series of four one-syllable words and had to decide whether two of the words were identical. This was contrasted with a no-stimulus control condition. All three experimental designs had a duration of ,17 min: 1) a behavior interleaved gradients (BIG; Eden et al. [1999] J Magn Reson Imaging 41:13,20) design (repetition time, TR, = 6 s), where stimuli were presented during the SBN-free periods between clustered volume acquisitions (CVA); 2) a sparse temporal sampling technique (STsamp; e.g., Gaab et al., [2003] Neuroimage 19:1417,1426) acquiring only one set of slices following each of the stimulations with a 16-s TR and jittered delay times between stimulus offset and image acquisition; and 3) an event-related design with continuous scanning (ERcont) using the stimulation design of STsamp but with a 2-s TR. The results demonstrated increased signal within Heschl's gyrus for the STsamp and BIG-CVA design in comparison to ERcont as well as differences in the overall functional anatomy among the designs. The possibility to obtain a time course of activation as well as the full recovery of the stimulus- and SBN-induced hemodynamic response function signal and lack of signal suppression from SBN during the STsamp design makes this technique a powerful approach for conducting auditory experiments using fMRI. Practical strengths and limitations of the three auditory acquisition paradigms are discussed. Hum Brain Mapp, 2006. © 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Assessing the influence of scanner background noise on auditory processing.HUMAN BRAIN MAPPING, Issue 8 2007Abstract Several studies reported decreased signal intensities within auditory areas for experimental designs employing continuous scanner background noise (SBN) in comparison to designs with less or no SBN. This study examined the source for this SBN-induced masking effect of the blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) response by directly comparing two experimental sessions with the same auditory stimulation, which was presented either with or without recorded scanner background noise (RecSBN). Ten subjects listened to a series of four one-syllable words and had to decide whether two of the words were identical. The words were either presented with a silent background or with added RecSBN. This was then contrasted with either silence or RecSBN. A sparse temporal sampling method was used in both sessions, which enabled us to directly assess the influence of RecSBN without varying scanning parameters, acquisition quantities, or auditory stimulations. Our results suggest that previously reported SBN-induced masking of the BOLD response in experimental designs with SBN might be caused by an interaction between increased baseline levels and nonlinearity effects within auditory cortices. Adding SBN to an experimental condition does not enhance signal intensities to the same degree that SBN does when presented with a silent background, and therefore contrasting an experimental and baseline condition that both have SBN may lead to signal decreases. In addition, our study shows this effect is greatest in Heschl's gyrus, but can also be observed in higher-order auditory areas. Hum Brain Mapp, 2006. © 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] A method for the direct electrical stimulation of the auditory system in deaf subjects: A functional magnetic resonance imaging studyJOURNAL OF MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING, Issue 1 2002Adnan Z. Alwatban BSc Abstract Purpose To develop a safe functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) procedure for auditory assessment of deaf subjects. Materials and Methods A gold-plated tungsten electrode has been developed which has zero magnetic susceptibility. Used with carbon leads and a carbon reference pad, it enables safe, distortion-free fMRI studies of deaf subjects following direct electrical stimulation of the acoustic nerve. Minor pickup of the radio frequency (RF) pulses by the electrode assembly is difficult to eliminate, and a SPARSE acquisition sequence is used to avoid any effects of unintentional auditory nerve stimulation. Results The procedure is demonstrated in a deaf volunteer. Activation is observed in the contralateral but not the ipsilateral primary auditory cortex. This is in sharp contrast to studies of auditory processing in hearing subjects, but consistent with the small number of previous positron emission tomography (PET) and MR studies on adult deaf subjects. Conclusion The fMRI procedure is able to demonstrate whether the auditory pathway is fully intact, and may provide a useful method for preoperative assessment of candidates for cochlear implantation. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2002;16:6,12. © 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Gender differences in hemispheric asymmetry of syllable processing: Left-lateralized magnetic N100 varies with syllable categorization in femalesPSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY, Issue 5 2004Jonas Obleser Abstract The present study used magnetic source imaging to examine gender differences in the functional hemispheric asymmetry of auditory processing. The auditory evoked N100m was examined in male and female subjects in response to natural syllables with varying consonant and vowel as well as nonspeech noise. In an additional task subjects had to categorize different syllables from the first 35 ms of syllables, that is, the plosive and the formant transition. Syllable-evoked N100m activity was larger in the left than in the right hemisphere in female but not in male subjects. This gender-specific hemispheric asymmetry was speech specific, that is, absent when processing meaningless noise. Only in females did the degree of left-lateralization predict successful syllable categorization from short syllable bursts: Results suggest gender-specific differences in spectro-temporal analysis of speech. [source] Nicotinic acetylcholine receptor structure and function in the efferent auditory systemTHE ANATOMICAL RECORD : ADVANCES IN INTEGRATIVE ANATOMY AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY, Issue 4 2006Lawrence R. Lustig Abstract This article reviews and presents new data regarding the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor subunits ,9 and ,10. Although phylogentically ancient, these subunits have only recently been identified as critical components of the efferent auditory system and medial olivocochlear pathway. This pathway is important in auditory processing by modulating outer hair cell function to broadly tune the cochlea and improve signal detection in noise. Pharmacologic properties of the functionally expressed ,9,10 receptor closely resemble the cholinergic response of outer hair cells. Molecular, immunohistochemical, and knockout mice studies have added further weight to the role this receptor plays in mediating the efferent auditory response. Alternate and complementary mechanisms of outer hair cell efferent activity might also be mediated through the nAChR ,9,10, either through secondary calcium stores, second messengers, or direct protein-protein interactions. We investigated protein-protein interactions using a yeast-two-hybrid screen of the nAChR ,10 intracellular loop against a rat cochlear cDNA library. Among the identified proteins was prosaposin, a precursor of saposins, which have been shown to act as neurotrophic factors in culture, can bind to a putative G0-coupled cell surface receptor, and may be involved in the prevention of cell death. This study and review suggest that nAChR ,9,10 may represent a potential therapeutic target for a variety of ear disorders, including preventing or treating noise-induced hearing loss, or such debilitating disorders as vertigo or tinnitus. Anat Rec Part A, 2006. © 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Contributions of spectral frequency analyses to the study of P50 ERP amplitude and suppression in bipolar disorder with or without a history of psychosisBIPOLAR DISORDERS, Issue 7 2008Christine A Carroll Objective:, The present study investigated event-related brain potential (ERP) indices of auditory processing and sensory gating in bipolar disorder and subgroups of bipolar patients with or without a history of psychosis using the P50 dual-click procedure. Auditory-evoked activity in two discrete frequency bands also was explored to distinguish between sensory registration and selective attention deficits. Methods:, Thirty-one individuals with bipolar disorder and 28 non-psychiatric controls were compared on ERP indices of auditory processing using a dual-click procedure. In addition to conventional P50 ERP peak-picking techniques, quantitative frequency analyses were applied to the ERP data to isolate stages of information processing associated with sensory registration (20,50 Hz; gamma band) and selective attention (0,20 Hz; low-frequency band). Results:, Compared to the non-psychiatric control group, patients with bipolar disorder exhibited reduced S1 response magnitudes for the conventional P50 peak-picking and low-frequency response analyses. A bipolar subgroup effect suggested that the attenuated S1 magnitudes from the P50 peak-picking and low-frequency analyses were largely attributable to patients without a history of psychosis. Conclusions:, The analysis of distinct frequency bands of the auditory-evoked response elicited during the dual-click procedure allowed further specification of the nature of auditory sensory processing and gating deficits in bipolar disorder with or without a history of psychosis. The observed S1 effects in the low-frequency band suggest selective attention deficits in bipolar patients, especially those patients without a history of psychosis, which may reflect a diminished capacity to selectively attend to salient stimuli as opposed to impairments of inhibitory sensory processes. [source] Effect of quetiapine on cognitive function in schizophrenia: a mismatch negativity potentials studyACTA NEUROPSYCHIATRICA, Issue 1 2009Guo-zhen Yuan Objective:, The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the effects of quetiapine on abnormalities of early auditory processing in patients with schizophrenia were reflected by mismatch negativity (MMN). Methods:, Subjects were 23 patients with schizophrenia and 23 controls. Psychopathology was rated in patients with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) at baseline and after 4-week and after 8-week treatments with quetiapine. Auditory stimuli for event-related potentials consisted of 100 ms/1000 Hz standards, intermixed with 100 ms/1500 Hz frequency deviants and 250 ms/ 1000 Hz duration deviants. A stimulus onset asynchrony of each was 300 ms. Electroencephalograph was recorded at Fz. BESA 5.1.8 was used to perform data analysis. MMN waveforms were obtained by subtracting waveforms elicited by standards from those elicited by frequency- or duration-deviant stimuli. Results:, Quetiapine decreased all PANSS scores. Patients showed smaller mean amplitudes of frequency and duration MMN at baseline than did controls. A repeated measure analysis of variance with sessions (i.e. baseline and 4- and 8-week treatments) and MMN type (frequency versus duration) as within-subject factors revealed no significant MMN type or MMN type × session main effect for MMN amplitudes (for MMN type: F = 0.704, df = 1, p = 0.403; for MMN type × session: F = 0.299, df = 2, p = 0.796). Session main effect was significant (F = 3.576, df = 2, p = 0.031). Least square difference tests showed significant differences between MMN amplitudes at 8 weeks and those at both baseline (p = 0.025) and 4 weeks (p = 0.020). MMN amplitudes at 8 weeks were higher than those at baseline. Conclusions:, Quetiapine improved the amplitudes of MMN after the 8-week treatment. MMN offers objective evidence that treatment with the quetiapine may ameliorate preattentive deficits in schizophrenia. [source] | ||||||||||||||||