Psychological intervention can partly alter P300-amplitude abnormalities in schizophrenics

In the present study, we investigated whether psychological interventions can alter P300-abnormalities, specifically enhancing reduced P300-amplitudes, in schizophrenics. A three-tone discrimination task was employed for recording P300s, in which psychological intervention to facilitate target detection was performed through delivering a buzzer sound one second after each designated target tone that informed its occurrence. This procedure was done exclusively during the third and fourth sessions among the six sessions in total. When the data for all the patients were analyzed as a whole, no significant change was observed. However, when the patients were broken down into two groups based on the P300-amplitudes in the first and second sessions, significant effects of the intervention emerged. The group with smaller P300-amplitudes showed a significant increase in P300-amplitudes as well as improved performance levels during and after the intervention sessions. On the contrary, the group with larger P300-amplitudes displayed a significant decrease in P300-amplitudes in these sessions. Interestingly, the above results were consistent with the subjective difficulty changes experienced by the patients through the sessions. Overall, the above results indicate that psychological interventions can partly enhance reduced P300-amplitudes in schizophrenics.