Discrimination of auditory verbal hallucination in schizophrenia based on EEG brain networks.

Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) are a core positive symptom of schizophrenia and are regarded as a consequence of the functional breakdown in the related sensory process. Yet, the potential mechanism of AVH is still lacking. In the present study, we explored the difference between AVHs (n = 23) and non-AVHs (n = 19) in schizophrenia and healthy controls (n = 29) by using multidimensional electroencephalograms data during an auditory oddball task. Compared to healthy controls, both AVH and non-AVH groups showed reduced P300 amplitudes. Additionally, the results from brain networks analysis revealed that AVH patients showed reduced left frontal to posterior parietal/temporal connectivity compared to non-AVH patients. Moreover, using the fused network properties of both delta and theta bands as features for in-depth learning made it possible to identify the AVH from non-AVH patients at an accuracy of 80.95%. The left frontal-parietal/temporal networks seen in the auditory oddball paradigm might be underlying biomarkers of AVH in schizophrenia. This study demonstrated for the first time the functional breakdown of the auditory processing pathway in the AVH patients, leading to a better understanding of the atypical brain network of the AVH patients.

The underlying mechanism of deficits of speech comprehension and hallucinations in Chinese patients with schizophrenia.

Sentence context and fundamental frequency (F0) contours are important factors to speech perception and comprehension. In Chinese-Mandarin, lexical tones can be distinguished by the F0 contours. Previous studies found healthy people could use the cue of context to recover the phonological representations of lexical tones from the altered tonal patterns to comprehend the sentences in quiet condition, but can not in noise environment. Lots of research showed that patients with schizophrenia have deficits of speech perception and comprehension. However, it is unclear how context and F0 contours influence speech perception and comprehension in patients with schizophrenia. This study detected the contribution of context and lexical tone to sentence comprehension in four types of sentences by manipulating the context and F0 contours in 32 patients with schizophrenia and 33 healthy controls. The results showed that (1) in patients with schizophrenia, the interaction between context and F0 contour was not significant, which was significant in healthy controls; (2) the scores of sentences with two types of sentences with flattened F0 contours were negatively correlated with hallucination trait scores; (3) the patients with schizophrenia showed significantly lower scores on the intelligibility of sentences in all conditions, which were negatively correlated with PANSS-P. The patients with schizophrenia couldn't use the cue of context to recover the phonological representations of lexical tones from the altered tonal patterns when they comprehend the sentences, inner noise may be the underlying mechanism for the deficits of speech perception and comprehension.

A Reading Model from the Perspective of Japanese Orthography: Connectionist Approach to the Hypothesis of Granularity and Transparency.

This study presents a computer simulation model of reading in Japanese syllabic kana and morphographic kanji. The model was based on the simulation model developed by Harm and Seidenberg for reading in English. The purpose of building the current model was to verify the validity of the hypothesis of granularity and transparency (HGT) postulated by Wydell and Butterworth, focusing on the granularity dimension. The HGT was developed in order to explain the behavioral dissociation between excellent reading skills in Japanese and poor reading skills in English of an English-Japanese bilingual individual as well as the relatively low incidence of developmental dyslexia in Japan. The current model was successful in simulating the granularity dimension of the HGT. The study also identified several limitations, which need to be addressed in future research.

Electrophysiological basis of reading related phonological impairment in Chinese speakers with schizophrenia: An ERP study.

It has been reported in alphabetic languages that individuals with schizophrenia showed language-related cognitive impairments including phonological deficits, which were in turn associated with clinical symptoms such as auditory hallucinations and thought disorders. To date, however, the phonological deficits involved in schizophrenia in Chinese and its neural basis have not been well established. In order to establish such a relationship we conducted a behavioral study using lexical tone judgment and digit span tasks as well as an event-related potential (ERP) study with an auditory oddball paradigm, in particular, for P300 effects, the event-related brain potential (ERP) index of discrimination. Chinese patients with schizophrenia and Chinese healthy controls in China participated in the current study. Compared to the healthy controls, the patients with schizophrenia showed significant impairments in phonological processing skills, which in turn significantly correlated with smaller P300 effects. Thus these behavioral and electrophysiological findings in Chinese patients with schizophrenia were critically evaluated in terms of their phonological processing abilities.

Lexical and sub-lexical reading skills and their correlation to clinical symptoms in young Chinese patients with schizophrenia.

Patients with schizophrenia often experience severe reading deficits such as oral reading and reading comprehension deficits. However, it is not known whether different types of lexical or sub-lexical components in reading are also impaired. In order to address this issue, the present study had 22 young Chinese patients with schizophrenia and 22 young Chinese normal controls undergo a battery of reading tests, which specifically measures lexical and sub-lexical components of reading in Chinese. The schizophrenic group further underwent Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) in order to ascertain the severity of patients' clinical symptoms. The results showed that compared to the controls, (1) the schizophrenic patients performed significantly poorly in orthographic processing, orthography-phonology mapping, and orthography-semantic mapping tests and further that (2) their performances in orthographic processing, and orthography-semantic mapping skill tests negatively correlated with the BPRS score. Note however that their ability to access their mental lexicon was intact. There is thus a clear need for studies with a larger sample-size and neurobiological measures which would lead to our better understanding of the behavioral as well as the neural relationships between schizophrenic patients, and their reading processing impairments, thus developing effective reading intervention programs for the schizophrenic patients.

Behavioral and Neuroimaging Research of Reading: a Case of Japanese.

Behavioral studies showed that AS, an English-Japanese bilingual, was a skilled reader in Japanese but was a phonological dyslexic in English. This behavioral dissociation was accounted for by the Hypothesis of Transparency and Granularity postulated by Wydell and Butterworth. However, a neuroimaging study using magnetoencephalography (MEG) revealed that AS has the same functional deficit in the left superior temporal gyrus (STG). This paper therefore offers an answer to this intriguing discrepancy between the behavioral dissociation and the neural unity in AS by reviewing existing behavioral and neuroimaging studies in alphabetic languages such as English, Finnish, French, and Italian, and nonalphabetic languages such as Japanese and Chinese.

Developmental changes in the role of different metalinguistic awareness skills in Chinese reading acquisition from preschool to third grade.

The present study investigated the relationship between Chinese reading skills and metalinguistic awareness skills such as phonological, morphological, and orthographic awareness for 101 Preschool, 94 Grade-1, 98 Grade-2, and 98 Grade-3 children from two primary schools in Mainland China. The aim of the study was to examine how each of these metalinguistic awareness skills would exert their influence on the success of reading in Chinese with age. The results showed that all three metalinguistic awareness skills significantly predicted reading success. It further revealed that orthographic awareness played a dominant role in the early stages of reading acquisition, and its influence decreased with age, while the opposite was true for the contribution of morphological awareness. The results were in stark contrast with studies in English, where phonological awareness is typically shown as the single most potent metalinguistic awareness factor in literacy acquisition. In order to account for the current data, a three-stage model of reading acquisition in Chinese is discussed.

Are lay people good at recognising the symptoms of schizophrenia?

AIM: The aim of this study was to explore the general public's perception of schizophrenia symptoms and the need to seek-help for symptoms. The recognition (or 'labelling') of schizophrenia symptoms, help-seeking behaviours and public awareness of schizophrenia have been suggested as potentially important factors relating to untreated psychosis. METHOD: Participants were asked to rate to what extent they believe vignettes describing classic symptoms (positive and negative) of schizophrenia indicate mental illness. They were also asked if the individuals depicted in the vignettes required help or treatment and asked to suggest what kind of help or treatment. RESULTS: Only three positive symptoms (i.e., Hallucinatory behaviour, Unusual thought content and Suspiciousness) of schizophrenia were reasonably well perceived (above 70%) as indicating mental illness more than the other positive or negative symptoms. Even when the participants recognised that the symptoms indicated mental illness, not everyone recommended professional help. CONCLUSION: There may be a need to improve public awareness of schizophrenia and psychosis symptoms, particularly regarding an awareness of the importance of early intervention for psychosis.

An investigation into kana reading development in normal and dyslexic Japanese children using length and lexicality effects.

This is the first study to report differences between Japanese children with and without dyslexia in the way string-length and lexicality effects are manifested when reading Japanese kana. These children were asked to read kana words and non-words consisting of either two or five kana characters. The results showed that the error rates of the normal Preschoolers and Primary-School children with dyslexia were higher than those of the normal Primary-School children. Further, the reading latencies of the normal Preschoolers, First-graders and dyslexics were significantly longer than those of the normal Second, Third and Fifth/Sixth graders. Moreover, reading latencies became shorter as the age of the participants increased. Both normal and dyslexic children showed significant effects of length and lexicality on reading latencies. However, the interaction between the length and lexicality was only seen in normal children from the Second-grade onwards. These results suggest that (1) normal First-graders reach a ceiling in terms of reading accuracy and that (2) as Japanese normal children become older, they become better at lexical reading processes, which leads to fluent kana reading, but that (3) the dyslexics, even at Fifth/Sixth grades, have not developed sufficient lexical reading processes.

The visual magnocellular pathway in Chinese-speaking children with developmental dyslexia.

Previous research into the cognitive processes involved in reading Chinese and developmental dyslexia in Chinese, revealed that the single most important factor appears to be orthographic processing skills rather than phonological skills. Also some studies have indicated that even in alphabetic languages some dyslexic individuals reveal deficits in orthographic processing skills, which are linked to a deficit in the visual magnocellular pathway. The current study therefore employed a visual psychophysical experiment together with visual and auditory event-related potential (ERP) experiments eliciting mismatch negativity (MMN) to investigate the link between visual magnocellular functional abnormalities and developmental dyslexia in Chinese. The performance levels of Chinese children with developmental dyslexia (DD) from the behavioural and electrophysiological experiments were compared to those of the chronological age-matched (CA) children and those of the reading level matched (RL) younger children. Both the behavioural and electrophysiological results suggest that the orthographic processing skills were compromised in the Chinese developmental dyslexics, which in turn is linked to a deficit in the visual magnocellular system.

The cross-script length effect: further evidence challenging PDP models of reading aloud.

The interaction between length and lexical status is one of the key findings used in support of models of reading aloud that postulate a serial process in the orthography-to-phonology translation (B. S. Weekes, 1997). However, proponents of parallel models argue that this effect arises in peripheral visual or articulatory processes. The authors addressed this possibility using the special characteristics of the Serbian and Japanese writing systems. Experiment 1 examined length effects in Serbian when participants were biased to interpret phonologically bivalent stimuli in the alphabet in which they are words or in the alphabet in which they are nonwords (i.e., the visual characteristics of stimuli were held constant across lexical status). Experiment 2 examined length effects in Japanese kana when words were presented in the kana script in which they usually appear or in the script in which they do not normally appear (i.e., the phonological characteristics of stimuli were held constant across lexical status). Results in both cases showed a larger length effect when stimuli were treated as nonwords and thus offered strong support to models of reading aloud that postulate a serial component.

Cognitive neuropsychological and regional cerebral blood flow study of a Japanese-English bilingual girl with specific language impairment (SLI).

We report here on an investigation into the possible factors which might have contributed to language impairment (LI) in EM, a 14-year-old Japanese-English bilingual girl. EM was born in the UK to Japanese parents with no other siblings, and used English to communicate with all other people except for her parents. A delay in her English language development was identified at primary school in the UK, which was attributed to her bilingualism. The deficiency in her English language skills persisted into her adolescence despite more than adequate educational opportunities (including additional language support). At the start of her secondary education, language ability/literacy attainment tests were conducted in both English and Japanese, and the results suggested specific language impairment (SLI) in both languages. Further, her brain Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) revealed significantly lower Regional Cerebral Blood Flow(rCBF) in the left temporo-parietal area, which is also similar to the area of dysfunction often found among Japanese individuals with SLI.

Classroom implications of recent research into literacy development: from predictors to assessment.

We outline how research into predictors of literacy underpins the development of increasingly accurate and informative assessments. We report three studies that emphasize the crucial role of speech and auditory skills on literacy development throughout primary and secondary school. Our first study addresses the effects of early childhood middle ear infections, the potential consequences for speech processing difficulties and the impact on early literacy development. Our second study outlines how speech and auditory skills are crucially related to early literacy in normally developing readers, whereas other skills such as motor, memory and IQ are only indirectly related. Our third study outlines the on-going impact of phonological awareness on reading and wider academic achievement in secondary-school pupils. Finally, we outline how teachers can use the current research to inform them about which assessments to conduct, and how to interpret the results.