Assessing the information content of ERP signals in schizophrenia using multivariate decoding methods

Highlights • This study took multivariate decoding methods that are widely used to assess the nature of neural representations in neurotypical people and applied them to a comparison of people with schizophrenia and matched control subjects.• Participants performed a visual working memory task that required remembering 1–5 items from one side of the display and ignoring an equal number of items on the other side of the display.• We attempted to decode which side was being held in working memory from the scalp distribution of the ERP activity during the delay period of the working memory task, and we found greater decoding accuracy in people with schizophrenia than in control subjects when a single item was being held in memory.• These results support the hyperfocusing hypothesis of cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia, and they provide an important proof of concept for applying multivariate decoding methods to comparisons of neural representations in psychiatric and non-psychiatric populations.

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