ERP ASSESSMENT OF VISUAL AND AUDITORY LANGUAGE PROCESSING IN SCHIZOPHRENIA

Language disturbance in schizophrenia has been recently attributed to disturbed priming mechanisms. In the present study, event-related pote ntials (ERPs), were recorded to final words in sentences presented to 13 chronic patients with schizophrenia and 12 normal controls. Half of the final words fit a sentence context and another half did not. The N400 (the ERP sensitive to language) latency was prolonged, and its am plitude was more negative to both correct and incorrect sentence endin gs in the group with schizophrenia relative to the group of normal con trols. The early ERP components, N100 and P200, were similar in both g roups. These results suggest that language abnormalities in schizophre nia are related to a dysfunction in the language system and not to a g eneral cognitive dysfunction, and may be related to poor use of contex t in patients with schizophrenia.