Investigating the Role of Attentional Amplification in Subliminal Auditory Processing in Patients with Schziphrenia: a Behavioral, EEG, Pupillometry, and Mrs Study

Schizophrenia is one of the top 15 leading causes of disability worldwide. The symptoms of schizophrenia are argued to be involved with an alteration of consciousness. Here we investigate the hypothesis that conscious perception and subliminal processing dissociate in patients with schizophrenia. Specifically, we investigate the role of top-down attentional amplification in auditory subliminal processing in the patients with schizophrenia.In the study, we use bistable/multistable auditory stimuli to approach the effect of attentional amplification on subliminal processing. In the auditory streaming task, participants can perceive ‘one stream’ and ‘two streams’, and these two percepts switch over time. In the verbal transformation task, the words recognized by the participants switch over time, and we define this kind of speech sequences as multistable auditory stimuli. In the auditory streaming task and verbal transformation task, there are ‘attended’ and ‘unattended’ conditions, and we measure auditory event-related potentials and pupil responses in these two conditions to observe the effect of attention amplification. In addition, we also measure the glutamatergic activity and the concentration of GABA in the auditory cortex.By correlating their clinical symptoms, behavioral performance, neurophysiological measurements, and neurotransmitters concentration, we can clarify the role of attention amplification in subliminal processes in the auditory domain, and we can shade lights on our understanding of the consciousness in schizophrenia.