# Auditory Attention in First Episode Psychosis

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH · 2021 · $202,820

## 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 goals
is to examine how attention affects sensory activity in the auditory system as subjects attend or ignore sounds,
with an aim towards disentangling sensory and executive contributions to perceptual deficits in early psychosis,
determine brain function and brain structure relationships, and to track progressive functional and structural
changes proximal to illness onset. 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. Subjects will be tested at first psychotic episode and 6 months later to follow any progressive pathology.
The purpose of this Supplement is to perform longitudinal retesting on participants and to increase the number
of baseline participant...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10373684
- **Project number:** 3R01MH108568-05S1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH
- **Principal Investigator:** Dean F Salisbury
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $202,820
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2020-08-19 → 2021-11-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10373684

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10373684, Auditory Attention in First Episode Psychosis (3R01MH108568-05S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10373684. Licensed CC0.

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