Predictive cues improve visual working memory encoding in schizophrenia
2024
Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
People with schizophrenia (PSZ) struggle to prioritize non-salient but relevant stimuli over salient distractors during visual working memory (VWM) encoding. However, they retain the ability to guide attention using predictive cues. This study used a visuospatial change-detection task, where PSZ and healthy controls (HCS) were asked to store information about various visual stimuli (flickering and non-flickering Gabor patches). The study investigated whether predictive cues help PSZ encode more information despite distractors. The results showed that patients with schizophrenia stored significantly less information in VWM compared to control persons. Without predictive cues, PSZ stored less non-flickering information, but with a predictive cue, they encoded both flickering and non-flickering information more effectively. This suggests that impaired attentional control in PSZ may be due to disruptions in GABAergic inhibition in early visual areas. The use of additional top-down cues significantly improved their performance, offering insights for pro-cognitive interventions.
External cues improve visual working memory encoding in the presence of salient distractors in schizophrenia
Catherine V. Barnes-Scheufler
Added on: 12-10-2024
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/external-cues-improve-visual-working-memory-encoding-in-the-presence-of-salient-distractors-in-schizophrenia/B71D695E8C9B085CA3ACBBC5D33E09FC
