# Auditory attention in first episode psychosis

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH · 2020 · $83,168

## Abstract

Selective attention, the ability to focus on one percept among others, is one of the first executive functions affected
by psychosis. Basic neuroscience work has begun to elucidate the underlying mechanisms of how selective
attention, arising in prefrontal cortex, modulates sensory cortex activity via connections with posterior parietal
cortex. In terms of physiology, alpha waves (~10 Hz) and gamma waves (~40 Hz) appear to play a central role
in the effects of attention, by which sensory activity to to-be-attended events is increased, while sensory activity
to to-be-ignored events is decreased. In human cognitive neuroscience research, studies that examine functional
connectivity between different areas of the brain on the basis of specific oscillations (rather than at the scalp) are
relatively few. The proposed studies will expand our knowledge of how attention increases sensory activity in the
human brain, and how these processes go awry in newly emerging psychosis. In human psychopathology
research, several emerging threads have changed the way psychosis is understood. First, evidence indicates
progressive cognitive and cortical gray matter decline during the early disease course, even prior to the
emergence of psychosis. Second, increasing evidence suggests that psychosis not only affects the highest levels
of cognition, but that sensory processes are affected as well. What is not known is to what degree these sensory
deficits are due to progressive pathology of cortical sensory areas or to progressive pathology of executive control
centers in prefrontal cortex and posterior parietal cortex, such that modulation of sensory activity by executive
centers is impaired via reduced functional connectivity. Both schizophrenia and affective psychosis are thought
to be late neurodevelopmental disorders with progressive worsening. We hypothesize that higher-order operations
that require long range communication and synchronization between multiple distal cortical areas and highly
complex integrated processing will be affected first. Hence, we suggest selective attention-based modulation of
sensory activity will be impaired quite early in disease course. Our primary goal is to examine how attention affects
sensory activity in the auditory system as subjects attend or ignore one tone, two tones, or four tones, thereby
increasing the attentional demand for each task. We will use combined EEG & MEG reconstructed into individual
brain morphology from structural MRI which will allow for highly precise measurement of neural activity within the
brain as participants perform the tasks. Subjects will be tested at first psychotic episode and 6 months later to
follow any progressive pathology, and at 12 months to assign definitive diagnoses. A secondary goal is to
determine if deficits in the ability to modulate sensory activity by attention, as indicated in our preliminary data, may
serve as biomarkers for emerging psychosis. If so, our next step would be to exam...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10055800
- **Project number:** 3R01MH108568-04S1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH
- **Principal Investigator:** Dean F Salisbury
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $83,168
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2016-08-19 → 2021-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10055800

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10055800, Auditory attention in first episode psychosis (3R01MH108568-04S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10055800. Licensed CC0.

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