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Speech perception and decision processes in relation to skin conductance and pupillographic measure in schizophrenia

1978; Elsevier BV; Volume: 14; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/0022-3956(78)90020-1

1879-1379

Peter H. Venables, Terry Patterson,

Neuroscience and Music Perception

Skin conductance and pupillography IN RECENT years two important findings have emerged from skin conductance research in schizophrenia. The long term studies of MEDNICK and SCHULSINGER~ in Denmark have implicated the recovery limb of the skin conductance orienting response (SCOR) as a significant factor in the prediction of schizophrenia. In these studies it has been demonstrated that the recovery of the SCOR is significantly faster in those children who will display schizophrenic symptomatology in later life. However, the mechanism of this aspect of the orienting response is not well understood despite the work of EDELBERG and others.z,j It is not as yet certain whether the same mechanism underlies all components of the SCOR or whether it is possible to postulate a different mechanism to underly some, or all, of the “time parameters” of skin conductance (latency rise time and recovery) as distinct from the “amplitude parameters” (basal level and amplitude of response).4 The second finding that has emerged with some clarity is that within a schizophrenic population the SCOR is absent in about 50 % of these patients. This finding has been most distinctly stated by GRUZELIER and VENABLESS-8 but has been confirmed by BERNSTEIN (personal communication) and pATTERSON.g The responding/nonresponding dimension of the SCOR has been used by GRUZELIER and VENABLES 7~10,11 to predict other variables such as heart rate, blood pressure and two-flash threshold (a suggested index of cortical ‘arousal level.12 Thus two parameters have appeared from skin conductance recording (responding/nonresponding and response recovery time) that have apparent usefulness in work with schizophrenics. In the first instance as a factor dividing adult schizophrenics into separate groups, and in the second as a diagnostic predictor while the patient is still in the premorbid state. Clearly it is of considerable importance to extend the work with both of these findings, not only for its own sake but because greater elucidation of the underlying mechanisms could be forthcoming. Over a considerable number of years RUBIN 13-18 has made the statement that pupillographic parameters show clear abnormalities in psychotic patients. Little attention however, has been paid to this work following the report of HAKEREM et al.19 that the ‘normal’ population reported by RUBIN has a much smaller variance than any that they had been able to find. Thus the abnormality of RUBIN’S psychotics was judged by deviation from a control population with excessively small variance. Unfortunately, no research has addressed itself