Impaired detection of silent interval change in schizophrenia

The reliably observed reduction in the mismatch negativity response to a change in sound duration in schizophrenia patients may be related to more widespread temporal processing impairments associated with the disorder. This study explored whether individuals with schizophrenia would show electrophysiological evidence of automatic deficits in the ability to detect changes in a regularly repeating interval between two tones. The established pattern was a repeating sequence of a pair of 50-ms tones with a 50-ms silent interval between them. In 8% of pairs, the silent interval between tones was increased to 125 ms. Significant differences in the response to the deviant tone pair in the patient group were consistent with impaired representation of the temporal relationship between sounds.