Measures of Sensory Dysfunction in Psychiatric and Developmental Disorders

 

Patients with schizophrenia and their clinically unaffected first degree relatives have been shown to have deficits in electrophysiological markers of early sensory processing. We are interested in examining the specificity of the dysfunction underpinning these deficits. We also aim to develop new approaches for exploiting this specificity with a view to increasing the clinical sensitivity of visual processing measures. It is hoped that this work, in combination with genetic information, could produce endophenotypic markers of this devastating disorder. Sensory processing in autism spectrum disorders has also been receiving increased attention. Recent work with our US-based collaborators has shown unusual responses to peripheral visual stimuli in children with autism spectrum disorder. We aim to build on this finding towards identifying biomarkers that have some predictive power with respect to clinical outcomes.

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