Features of Visual Information Processing in Patients with Schizophrenia in the Early Stages

Abstract

We performed the analysis of electrophysiological markers of visual information processing in schizophrenia. The relevance of this work is determined by the advantages of combining of the method of cognitive visual evoked potentials and the method of spatial-frequency filtering of images with different semantics in order to detect disorders. This method allows assessing of the functional state of the visual system in the early stages of cognitive impairment, based on the objective electrophysiological methods. We studied the nature of changes in the amplitudes of the components of evoked potentials in response to the presentation of a combination of stimuli with different spatial-frequency and semantic characteristics (objects of animate and inanimate nature) in patients with schizophrenia in the early stages. The obtained data indicated a predominant decrease in the activity of the "high-frequency" parvo system, which manifests itself in a perception disorder and the abnormality of processing of small images and their details. Also, we obtained data in patients with schizophrenia that signifies an abnormality of the involuntary classification of images of objects of animate and inanimate nature. The obtained result is important for the understanding of the features of visual information processing in patients with schizophrenia in the early stages of the disease and the development of methods of cognitive impairments measuring.