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Updated: Jun 7, 2026
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Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior
Published on: April 16, 2014
Schizophrenia patients show augmented spatial frame illusion for visual and visuomotor tasks
1Mailman Research Center, McLean Hospital, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School 115 Mill Street, Belmont, MA 02478, USA. ychen@mclean.harvard.edu
Neuroscience
|October 26, 2010
Summary
Schizophrenia patients show exaggerated spatial mislocalization in visual and visuomotor tasks, suggesting impaired inhibitory control may underlie these perception and action deficits.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Psychiatry
- Visual Perception
Background:
- Schizophrenia is associated with visual perception and visually guided action deficits.
- The underlying neural mechanisms for these distinct process abnormalities remain unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate shared or distinct brain mechanisms underlying visual and visuomotor processing abnormalities in schizophrenia.
- To examine the impact of spatial context on visual and visuomotor processing in schizophrenia using the Roelofs effect.
Main Methods:
- Assessed the Roelofs effect, a spatial mislocalization illusion, in individuals with schizophrenia.
- Measured object localization via direct visual, immediate visuomotor (reaching-to-touch), and delayed visuomotor responses.
Main Results:
- Schizophrenia patients exhibited significantly larger Roelofs effect magnitudes across all response conditions.
- This indicates excessive spatial contextual influences on visual and visuomotor processing in schizophrenia.
- Abnormalities were observed even when visual and visuomotor information were integrated over time.
Conclusions:
- Findings support a common mechanism of improper inhibitory control in schizophrenia.
- This deficit may explain the observed abnormalities in both visual perception and visuomotor control.
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