Postersession 2
Poster #: 14
Topic: Clinical applications (incl. consciousness)
Thursday, Sep 10, 2015
14:30-16:00
1st floor
The effect of cognitive training on the mismatch negativity in schizophrenia
1Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany
2Institute of Forensic Psychiatry, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany
3Pyschology, University of Wuppertal, Germany
4Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Göttingen, Germany
5Psychology, University of Wuppertal, Germany
bernhard.mueller@uni-due.de
The mismatch negativity (MMN) repeatedly has been shown to be impaired in schizophrenia. In the present study, the effect of auditory training (AUD, n=14) on the MMN was compared to that of a visual-spatial training (VIS, n=14) and a treatment-as usual (TAU, n=14) condition.
Training consisted of ten 50-min sessions over two weeks. Assessments took place before and after training and at a two-month follow-up. They comprised clinical measures and MMN recordings to frequency and duration deviant stimuli.
We found significant main effect for type of stimulus deviance with a more negative MMN to frequency than duration deviants. Individual group comparisons showed moderately greater improvement in the VIS than TAU group with regard to the MMN to frequency deviants from pre to post training.
In Conclusion, we found no evidence for a change in MMN after a brief two-week auditory training in schizophrenia patients. There was, however, a moderate effect of visual spatial training increasing MMN to frequency-deviants. While this result awaits replication, it is conceivable that the visual-spatial training contributed to salience detection which may have resulted in an increased frequency MMN amplitude in patients with schizophrenia.