Association study between auditory P3a/P3b event-related potentials and thought disorder in schizophrenia

Thought disorder is considered as one of the core features of schizophrenia and several research groups previously reported an association between P300 (P3b) amplitude and thought disorder in schizophrenia. However, previous studies have not evaluated two P300 subcomponents (P3a and P3b) to investigate whether the relationship with thought disorder was specific to P3b. In this study, we measured P3b and thought disorder of 60 patients with schizophrenia. We also measured P3a of 36 patients out of this sample. We replicated correlation between P3b amplitude and thought disorder and extended this finding by observing that this correlation was not present for the P3a subcomponent. These results suggest that specific electrophysiological abnormalities associated with context updating may underlie thought disorder in schizophrenia.