title: Enhanced distraction by magnocellular salience signals in schizophrenia.
abstract: Research on schizophrenia has provided evidence of both impaired attentional control and dysfunctional magnocellular sensory processing. The present study tested the hypothesis that these impairments may be related, such that people with schizophrenia would be differentially distracted by stimuli that strongly activate the magnocellular pathway. To accomplish this, we used a visual attention paradigm from the basic cognitive neuroscience literature designed to assess the capture of attention by salient but irrelevant stimuli. Participants searched for a target shape in an array of non-target shapes. On some trials, a salient distractor was presented that either selectively activated the parvocellular system (parvo-biased distractors) or activated both the magnocellular and parvocellular systems (magno+parvo distractors). For both manual reaction times and eye movement measures, the magno+parvo distractors captured attention more strongly than the parvo-biased distractors in people with schizophrenia, but the opposite pattern was observed in matched healthy control participants. These results indicate that attentional control deficits in schizophrenia may arise, at least in part, by means of an interaction with magnocellular sensory dysfunction.
authors.affiliation: Center for Mind & Brain and Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, CA 95618, United States. Electronic address: cjleonard@ucdavis.edu.
authors.forename: Carly J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Leonard
authors.affiliation: University of Maryland School of Medicine, Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, Baltimore, MD, United States.
authors.forename: Benjamin M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Robinson
authors.affiliation: University of Maryland School of Medicine, Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, Baltimore, MD, United States.
authors.forename: Britta
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Hahn
authors.affiliation: University of Maryland School of Medicine, Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, Baltimore, MD, United States.
authors.forename: James M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Gold
authors.affiliation: Center for Mind & Brain and Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, CA 95618, United States.
authors.forename: Steven J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Luck
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001289:Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity / Q000209:etiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000209:etiology*; D010469:Perceptual Distortion / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000150:complications*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology
keywords: Attentional capture; Eye movements; Magnocellular; Schizophrenia; Visual attention; Visual search