The Relationship Between Audiovisual Binding Tendencies and Prodromal Features of Schizophrenia in the General Population

Abstract

Current theoretical accounts of schizophrenia have considered the disorder within the framework of hierarchical Bayesian inference, positing that symptoms arise from a deficit in the brain’s capacity to combine incoming sensory information with preexisting priors. Here, we present the first investigation to examine the relationship between priors governing multisensory perception and subclinical, prodromal features of schizophrenia in the general population. We tested participants in two complementary tasks (one spatial, one temporal) and employed a Bayesian model to estimate both the precision of unisensory encoding and the prior tendency to integrate audiovisual signals (i.e., the “binding tendency”). Results revealed that lower binding tendency scores in the spatial task were associated with higher numbers of self-reported prodromal features. These results indicate decreased binding of audiovisual spatial information may be moderately related to the frequency of prodromal characteristics in the general population.