# Visual suppression deficits as a biomarker of working memory impairment in schizophrenia

## TL;DR

The study explores how visual suppression deficits may serve as a biomarker for working memory impairment in schizophrenia.

## Contribution

The study introduces visual surround suppression as a potential biomarker for working memory and cognitive impairments in schizophrenia.

## Key findings

- Reduced visual suppression predicts impaired working memory performance in schizophrenia patients.
- Visual suppression correlates with early visual measures and cognitive performance in both patients and controls.
- Altered ERP responses to visual suppression suggest disrupted excitation/inhibition balance in schizophrenia.

## Abstract

Although working memory (WM) deficits are well established in schizophrenia (SZ), their underlying source is still unclear. It has been proposed that these WM deficits may depend on an imbalance between cortical excitation and inhibition (E/I), but its importance for SZ remains unclear. A potential biomarker for E/I is visual Surround Suppression (SS), where the apparent contrast of a central grating is typically suppressed by a surround with parallel orientation (versus orthogonal). Here we exploited the SS phenomenon to test whether E/I contributes to WM impairments in schizophrenia.

Using centre-surround gratings, we measured psychophysical thresholds for contrast matching, detection and orientation discrimination, in 21 SZ patients and 20 matched controls. Using the same stimuli, we also measured WM accuracy and event-related potentials (ERPs) in a delayed-match-to-sample task.

In SZ participants, reduced SS predicted impaired WM performance as well as general cognitive measures (CANTAB). Similar relationships were also observed between other early visual measures (impaired contrast detection and orientation discrimination), WM and general cognition. In response to SS, there was reduced amplitude visual ERPs (P1, N1 and P2) in patients compared with controls. Furthermore, across both groups the P1 amplitude correlated with visual SS.

Together, these findings provide evidence that imbalances in cortical excitation and inhibition may contribute to visual and some cognitive deficits in schizophrenia, and that SS may provide a behavioural and electrophysiological biomarker.

•Visual surround suppression (SS) shows excitation/inhibition (E/I) imbalance in SZ.•Impaired SS predicts working memory deficits in SZ.•ERP correlate of SS found in controls, disrupted in SZ•SS may provide a biomarker for visual and cognitive impairment.

Visual surround suppression (SS) shows excitation/inhibition (E/I) imbalance in SZ.

Impaired SS predicts working memory deficits in SZ.

ERP correlate of SS found in controls, disrupted in SZ

SS may provide a biomarker for visual and cognitive impairment.