title: Haemodynamic and electrophysiological markers of pragmatic language comprehension in schizophrenia.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The present study aimed at investigating neurophysiological markers of language perception in schizophrenia using simultaneous near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and event-related potentials (ERPs), which have been proven to be useful for studying language processing abilities in psychiatric patients. The study shall help to integrate previous findings from ERP and fMRI studies on figurative language comprehension in schizophrenia and elucidate how electrophysiological and haemodynamic markers of language processing are related.
  
  
  METHODS
  Twenty-two healthy subjects and 22 schizophrenia patients judged 120 sentences regarding their meaningfulness. Phrases were literal, metaphoric, or meaningless. EEG-fNIRS signals were recorded throughout the entire experiment.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Schizophrenia patients showed deficient and delayed sentence comprehension. Both the early N400 and left-hemispheric activation during language comprehension were altered in patients. Correlation analyses showed that metaphor-related ERPs were strongly linked to haemodynamic cortical activity in healthy subjects, but not in patients.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our results indicate group differences in cortical electrophysiological and haemodynamic activation that represent rather general impairments in the processing of complex language. Simultaneous EEG/NIRS applications are useful to depict these neural markers and to investigate their relationship. Future studies are needed to clarify the nature of respective anomalies and their potential as putative neural markers in schizophrenia research.
authors: a Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy , University of Tuebingen , Tuebingen , Germany.
authors: Sabrina
authors: S
authors: Schneider
authors: b Department of Psychiatry , Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, University of Aachen , Aachen , Germany.
authors: Lisa
authors: L
authors: Wagels
authors: a Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy , University of Tuebingen , Tuebingen , Germany.
authors: Florian B
authors: FB
authors: Haeussinger
authors: a Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy , University of Tuebingen , Tuebingen , Germany.
authors: Andreas J
authors: AJ
authors: Fallgatter
authors: a Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy , University of Tuebingen , Tuebingen , Germany.
authors: Ann-Christine
authors: AC
authors: Ehlis
authors: a Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy , University of Tuebingen , Tuebingen , Germany.
authors: Alexander M
authors: AM
authors: Rapp
keywords: event-related potentials; figurative language comprehension; functional near-infrared spectroscopy; inferior frontal cortex; schizophrenia