Mapping of Event-Related Potentials (ERP) associated with auditory and visual odd-ball paradigms has shown consistent differences between healthy controls and schizophrenia patients. It may be hypothesized that higher task attentional/cognitive demand will result in larger differences in these paradigms, which may help understanding the substrates of cognitive deficits in this syndrome. To this aim, we performed an EEG study comparing the effects of increasing the attentional/cognitive load of an auditory N-back task on the Event-Related Potential in 50 subjects with schizophrenia (11 first episodes) and 35 healthy controls. We considered a post-target window of 1000 ms to explore possible between groups differences in N100, P300, and Late Slow Wave (LSW), and compared these components between 0-back (‘lower attentional/cognitive load) and 1-back (‘higher attentional/cognitive load’) conditions. Our results showed that N100 and LSW amplitude increase from 0- to 1-back condition was significantly larger in healthy controls compared to schizophrenia patients. Furthermore, LSW amplitude difference between 0- and 1-back conditions positively correlated with performance in the behavioral cognitive assessment. Taken together, these results support that higher task attentional/cognitive load (0-back vs. 1-back condition) increase N100 amplitude differences and reveal new findings related to the LSW component in schizophrenia.

与听觉和视觉奇数球范式相关的事件相关电位 (ERP) 映射显示健康对照和精神分裂症患者之间存在一致的差异。可以假设更高的任务注意力/认知需求将导致这些范式的更大差异，这可能有助于理解这种综合征中认知缺陷的基础。为此，我们进行了一项脑电图研究，比较了 50 名精神分裂症患者（11 名首发）和 35 名健康对照者增加听觉 N-back 任务的注意力/认知负荷对事件相关电位的影响。我们考虑了一个 1000 毫秒的目标后窗口，以探索 N100、P300 和晚期慢波 (LSW) 的组间差异，并比较了 0-back（“较低的注意力/认知负荷”）和 1-back（“较高的注意力/认知负荷”）条件之间的这些组件。我们的研究结果表明，与精神分裂症患者相比，健康对照组的 N100 和 LSW 幅度从 0 到 1 背部的增加明显更大。此外，0-和 1-back 条件之间的 LSW 幅度差异与行为认知评估中的表现正相关。总之，这些结果支持更高的任务注意力/认知负荷（0-back 0 和 1 后条件之间的 LSW 幅度差异与行为认知评估中的表现正相关。总之，这些结果支持更高的任务注意力/认知负荷（0-back 0 和 1 后条件之间的 LSW 幅度差异与行为认知评估中的表现正相关。总之，这些结果支持更高的任务注意力/认知负荷（0-back与1-back 条件）增加 N100 幅度差异并揭示与精神分裂症中 LSW 成分相关的新发现。