LATERALIZED SEMANTIC AND INDIRECT SEMANTIC PRIMING EFFECTS IN PEOPLE WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA

Background In schizophrenia, disturbances in the development of physio logical hemisphere asymmetry are assumed to play a pathogenetic role. The most striking difference between hemispheres is in language proces sing. The left hemisphere is superior in the use of syntactic or seman tic information, whereas the right hemisphere uses contextual informat ion more effectively. Method Using psycholinguistic experimental techn iques, semantic associations were examined in 38 control subjects, 24 non-thought-disordered and 16 thought-disordered people with schizophr enia, for both hemispheres separately. Results Direct semantic priming did not differ between the hemispheres in any of the groups. Only tho ught-disordered people showed significant indirect semantic priming in the left hemisphere. Conclusions The results support: (a) a prominent role of the right hemisphere for remote associations; (b) enhanced sp reading of semantic associations in thought-disordered subjects; and ( c) disorganisation of the functional asymmetry oi semantic processing in thought-disordered subjects.