The key to helping people living with disabling neuropsychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia is to identify, and intervene by providing suitable treatment to, individuals who are at high risk before they present with a severe psychotic episode. New findings indicate that early detection of risk in vulnerable populations may be achieved by using the auditory mismatch negativity (MMN), a measure of a well-defined, event-related potential (ERP) that is generated in response to infrequent, irregular auditory stimuli change. In other words, MMN “can be used to assess the brain’s response to novel or deviant stimuli,” and, “is applied to disorder associated with disturbances in sensory information processes, including individuals with schizophrenia,” according to the authors of a study recently published in Schizophrenia Research and Treatment.
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