Electrophysiological assessment of auditory stimulus-specific plasticity in schizophrenia.

This paper was a human clinical electrophysiology investigation of rapid neuroplasticity in the laboratory setting, and the paper was published in Biological Psychiatry. The approach was a direct clinical translation of prior studies of human and animal model studies. The plasticity approach was the first clinical paper to adapt a translational human and animal biomarker for ERP measured auditory plasticity. As the first of its kind regarding disrupted neuroplasticity in schizophrenia it was part of a special issue, titled “Translational Neuroscience Insights into Neuroplasticity Deficits in Schizophrenia”. In the special issue reviews and experimental findings of animal & human clinical results were published side by side. Disrupted neuroplasticity may be an important aspect of the neural basis for the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. We utilized a paradigm that had previously been shown to be non- invasively measurable human subjects. The neuroplasticity paradigm had been demonstrated to correspond to several mechanisms responsible to NMDA mediated long-term potentiation in sensory pathways. In this investigation event-related brain potentials were used to assay neuroplasticity after auditory conditioning in chronic schizophrenia patients and matched healthy control subjects.

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Recommended citation: Mears, R. P., & Spencer, K. M. (2012). " Electrophysiological assessment of auditory stimulus-specific plasticity in schizophrenia." Biological psychiatry , 71(6), 503-511.