Perceptual decision-making contribution to early auditory deficits in schizophrenia

Objectives

Objective 1: To explore if specific impairments in binary decision-making processes account for early auditory disturbance in schizophrenia.
Objective 2: To determine the relationship between decision-making, early auditory deficits and clinical symptoms.

Abstract

Early auditory processing (EAP) dysfunctions (often referred as “bottom-up”) are an integral and important part of the cognitive pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Critical substrates for EAP are localized to the auditory cortex regions. EAP can be explored using behavioral assessment of the ability to discriminate simple sensory stimuli e.g., frequency of tone pairs using two-choices tone-matching task. However, it remains unclear if impaired tone-matching performance is solely related to early sensory dysfunction or if the ability to flexibly translate early levels of processing into behavioral responses, which substrates are related to activity of further extra-auditory regions, contributes to EAP disturbance. Here, we will use an innovative computational drift-diffusion approach to account for perceptual decision-making and uncover.

Methods

The student will investigate a ready-to-use dataset including tone-matching behavioral performance of 25 subjects with schizophrenia and 25 healthy volunteers. She/he will learn and apply a computational drift-diffusion model to the data.

References

• Dondé C, Kantrowitz JT, Medalia A, Saperstein A, Balla A, Sehatpour P, Martinez A, O’Connel MN, Javitt DC. Early auditory processing dysfunction in schizophrenia: mechanisms and implications. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2023.
• Rouy, M., Pereira, M., Saliou, P., Sanchez, R., el Mardi, W., Sebban, H., Baque, E., Porte, P., Dezier, C., de Gardelle, V., Mamassian, P., Moulin, C., Donde, C.*, Roux, P.*, and Faivre, N.*. (2023). medRxiv, doi: 10.1101/2023.03.28.23287851.
• Faivre, N.*, Roger, M.*, Pereira, M., de Gardelle, V., Vergnaud, JC., Passerieux, C., and Roux, P. (2020). Confidence in perceptual decision-making is preserved in schizophrenia. (2020). Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, doi: 10.1503/jpn.200022.

Requested domaines of expertise

Schizophrenia; early auditory processing; decision-making; neurocognition; computation.

Contacts

Clément Dondé
Email : clement.dondeuniv-grenoble-alpes.fr
Phone : 04 56 52 05 00