Unexpected higher resilience to distraction during visual working memory in schizophrenia

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Psychiatry

Background:

• Visual working memory (VWM) is crucial for cognitive function.
• Schizophrenia (SZ) is associated with significant cognitive deficits, including VWM impairments.
• The impact of distraction on VWM in SZ remains incompletely understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the computational mechanisms of VWM deficits in schizophrenia under distraction.
• To compare VWM performance and resource allocation between SZ patients and healthy controls (HC) with varying levels of distraction.
• To explore the role of cognitive control flexibility in VWM performance in SZ.

Main Methods:

• A modified delayed-estimation task was administered to 60 SZ patients and 61 HC.
• The task involved varying set sizes (1 or 3 items) and distractor numbers (0 or 2).
• The variable precision model was used to analyze VWM resource allocation variability.

Main Results:

• SZ patients exhibited universally impaired VWM performance compared to HC.
• Distraction did not disproportionately exacerbate VWM deficits in SZ.
• Distractors increased resource allocation variability in HC, but not in SZ, indicating less perturbation of VWM by distractors in SZ.

Conclusions:

• SZ patients' VWM processes appear less sensitive to external distractors, potentially due to reduced cognitive control flexibility.
• The findings suggest a complex, nonlinear interaction of cognitive dysfunctions in schizophrenia.
• This study offers novel insights into the mechanistic underpinnings of cognitive deficits in SZ.