The following is a summary of “Deficits in prosodic speech-in-noise recognition in schizophrenia patients and its association with psychiatric symptoms,” published in the November 2024 issue of Psychiatry by She et al.
Uncertainty in speech perception and emotional disturbances are linked to psychiatric symptoms. The impact of prosody on speech-in-noise recognition (SR) and its relation to psychiatric symptoms in schizophrenia (SCHs) remains unclear.
Researchers conducted a retrospective study to examine the neural substrates of prosodic SR deficits in patients with SCHs.
They included 54 patients with SCHs and 59 healthy controls (HCs) who completed an SR task, identifying target pseudo-sentences expressed in 6 prosodies (neutral, happy, sad, angry, fearful, disgusted). Participants also underwent Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) assessments and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning. The study examined deficits in prosodic SR and their associations with brain gray matter volume (GMV) and psychiatric symptoms.
The results showed that negative emotional prosodies (sad, angry, fearful, and disgusted) impaired both groups’ SR. SR was similar for neutral and happy conditions, while better SR occurred under sad and fearful prosodies than anger and disgust. Better prosodic SR was linked to shorter duration and lower shimmer. A partial least squares (PLS) component of GMV across 47 brain regions correlated with all 6 prosodic SRs. The happy SR was associated with PANSS total, general scores, and negative adjusting for covariates.
They found that negative emotional prosodies impaired SR in patients suffering from SCHs, with prosodic SR abnormalities linked to brain GMV reductions and psychiatric symptoms. These findings suggested that improving happy SR could help reduce negative symptoms through neuroplasticity.
Source: bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-024-06065-8
