title: Effects of domain-specific noise on visual motion processing in schizophrenia.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Visual perception impairments in schizophrenia stem from abnormal information processing. Information processing requires neural response to a stimulus (signal) against a backdrop of 1) random variation in baseline neural activity (internal noise) and sometimes irrelevant environmental stimulation (external noise). Filtering out noise is a critical aspect of information processing, and needs to be critically examined in schizophrenia.
  
  
  METHODS
  To understand how noise in the visual system constrains perceptual processing, we devised a novel paradigm to build in both signal and external noise on same visual stimulus. Here, instead of uniformed noise, domain-specific noise--variations in stimulus speed--was introduced to evaluate the performance of schizophrenia patients in speed discrimination. Each motion stimulus--a random dot pattern (RDP) comprising 200 moving dots--included a range of speeds, drawn individually from a Gaussian distribution for each dot. The task for patients (n = 26) and controls (n = 28) was to identify which of two stimuli moved faster based on their mean speeds.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Patients exhibited deficient speed discrimination at baseline, in the absence of speed noise. Their speed discrimination was further degraded in the presence of low and medium levels of external noise. In the presence of a high levels of noise, degradation of patients' speed discrimination leveled-off, resulting in similar performance to controls.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These domain-specific noise effects on speed discrimination provide direct evidence for the existence of heightened internal noise within a specific visual motion processing domain in schizophrenia.
authors.affiliation: McLean Hospital, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Yue
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Norton
authors.affiliation: Department of Global Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Ryan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: McBain
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003710:Demography; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D016011:Normal Distribution; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012684:Sensory Thresholds / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*