A neural model of modified excitation/inhibition and feedback levels in schizophrenia.

Introduction: The strength of certain visual illusions, including contrast-contrast and apparent motion, is weakened in individuals with schizophrenia. Such phenomena have been interpreted as the impaired integration of inhibitory and excitatory neural responses, and impaired top-down feedback mechanisms.

Methods: To investigate whether and how these factors influence the perceived contrast-contrast and apparent motion illusions in individuals with schizophrenia, we propose a two-layer network, with top-down feedback from layer 2 to layer 1 that can model visual receptive fields (RFs) and their inhibitory and excitatory subfields.

Results: Our neural model suggests that illusion perception changes in individuals with schizophrenia can be influenced by altered top-down mechanisms and the organization of the on-center off-surround receptive fields. Alteration of the RF inhibitory surround and/or the excitatory center can replicate the difference of illusion precepts between individuals with schizophrenia within certain clinical states and normal controls. The results show that the simulated top-down feedback modulation enlarges the difference of the model illusion representations, replicating the difference between the two groups.

Discussion: We propose that the heterogeneity of visual and in general sensory processing in certain clinical states of schizophrenia can be largely explained by the degree of top-down feedback reduction, emphasizing the critical role of top-down feedback in illusion perception, and to a lesser extent on the imbalance of excitation/inhibition. Our neural model provides a mechanistic explanation for the modulated visual percepts of contrast-contrast and apparent motion in schizophrenia with findings that can explain a broad range of visual perceptual observations in previous studies. The two-layer motif of the current model provides a general framework that can be tailored to investigate subcortico-cortical (such as thalamocortical) and cortico-cortical networks, bridging neurobiological changes in schizophrenia and perceptual processing.