Quantitative detection and assessment of schizophrenia using electrovestibulography

Schizophrenia (SZ) is the most disabling among the psychiatric disorders and associated with multiple abnormalities in brain structure and neurotransmitter systems. The benefits of a validated, quantitative diagnosis tool are well established. Electrovestibulography (EVestG) can detect and record neural activity of vestibular system and associated pathways by a wavelet based method, named neural event extraction routine, and provide a quantitative indirect measure of activity in brain regions and pathways that are compromised in SZ. We compared EVestG responses of eighteen SZ subjects with twenty one healthy control subjects. A number of biomarkers significantly (pLt0.05) distinguished SZ from normal population. We also found significant correlations between the EVestG responses and positive and negative syndrome rating scale (PANNS) scores and/or disease duration.