Visual self-recognition in patients with schizophrenia

Self-processing is associated with distinct patterns of behavior and neural activity in healthy individuals. Self-monitoring deficits have been reported in schizophrenia in auditory and tactile modalities but it is unknown whether they generalize to all sensory domains. We investigated self-face recognition in patients with schizophrenia, using a visual search paradigm with three types of targets: objects, famous faces and self-faces. Schizophrenic patients showed increased reaction time (RT) for detecting targets overall compared to normal controls but they showed faster RT for self-face compared with the Famous-face condition. For healthy controls, there was no difference between Self- and Famous-face conditions. Thus, visual search for self-face is more efficient than for famous faces and self-face recognition is spared in schizophrenia. These findings suggest that impaired self-processing in schizophrenia may be task-dependent rather than ubiquitous.