Background and hypothesis: Corollary discharge (CD) signals are "copies" of motor signals sent to sensory areas to predict the corresponding input. They are a posited mechanism enabling one to distinguish actions generated by oneself vs external forces. Consequently, altered CD is a hypothesized mechanism for agency disturbances in psychosis. Previous studies have shown a decreased influence of CD signals on visual perception in individuals with schizophrenia-particularly in those with more severe positive symptoms. We therefore hypothesized that altered CD may be a trans-diagnostic mechanism of psychosis.
Study design: We examined oculomotor CD (using the blanking task) in 49 participants with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (SZ), 36 bipolar participants with psychosis (BPP), and 40 healthy controls (HC). Participants made a saccade to a visual target. Upon saccade initiation, the target disappeared and reappeared at a horizontally displaced position. Participants indicated the direction of displacement. With intact CD, participants can make accurate perceptual judgements. Otherwise, participants may use saccade landing site as a proxy of pre-saccadic target to inform perception. Thus, multi-level modeling was used to examine the influence of target displacement and saccade landing site on displacement judgements.
Study results: SZ and BPP were equally less sensitive to target displacement than HC. Moreover, regardless of diagnosis, SZ and BPP with more severe positive symptoms were more likely to rely on saccade landing site.
Conclusions: These results suggest that altered CD may be a trans-diagnostic mechanism of psychosis.
Keywords: agency; anomalous self-experiences; bipolar disorder; eye movements; schizophrenia; trans-saccadic perception.
© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center.