Facial fear processing and psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia: functional magnetic resonance imaging study

The recognition of negative facial affect is impaired in people with schizophrenia. The neural underpinnings of this deficit and its relationship to the symptoms of psychosis are still unclear. To examine the association between positive and negative psychotic symptoms and activation within the amyg...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:British journal of psychiatry 2008-03, Vol.192 (3), p.191-196
Main Authors: Michalopoulou, Panayiota G., Surguladze, Simon, Morley, Lucy A., Giampietro, Vincent P., Murray, Robin M., Shergill, Sukhwinder S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acknowledgment
Adult
Amygdala
Amygdala - physiopathology
Brain Mapping - methods
Dopamine
Emotional behavior
Emotions
Facial Expression
Facial expressions
Fear
Fear & phobias
Female
Functional magnetic resonance imaging
Humans
Information processing
Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods
Male
Medical imaging
Mental disorders
Middle Aged
Negative symptoms
Neurosciences
NMR
Nuclear magnetic resonance
Patients
Pattern recognition
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Psychiatry
Psychoses
Psychosis
Psychotic symptoms
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia - physiopathology
Schizophrenic Psychology
Sex discrimination
Social Perception
Superior temporal gyrus
Temporal gyrus
Temporal Lobe - physiopathology
Trends
Variance analysis
Visual processing
Volunteers
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Summary:The recognition of negative facial affect is impaired in people with schizophrenia. The neural underpinnings of this deficit and its relationship to the symptoms of psychosis are still unclear. To examine the association between positive and negative psychotic symptoms and activation within the amygdala and extrastriate visual regions of patients with schizophrenia during fearful and neutral facial expression processing. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to measure neural responses to neutral and fearful facial expressions in 11 patients with schizophrenia and 9 healthy volunteers during an implicit emotional task. No association between amygdala activation and positive symptoms was found; the activation within the left superior temporal gyrus was negatively associated with the negative symptoms of the patients. Our results indicate an association between impaired extrastriate visual processing of facial fear and negative symptoms, which may underlie the previously reported difficulties of patients with negative symptoms in the recognition of facial fear.
ISSN:0007-1250
1472-1465
DOI:10.1192/bjp.bp.106.032649