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Related Experiment Video

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Conscious and Non-conscious Representations of Emotional Faces in Asperger's Syndrome

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Emotional face processing and flat affect in schizophrenia: functional and structural neural correlates.

M Lepage¹, K Sergerie, A Benoit

¹Douglas Mental Health University Institute, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Verdun, Québec, Canada. martin.lepage@mcgill.ca

Psychological Medicine

|February 3, 2011

Summary

Schizophrenia patients show similar brain activity to controls when perceiving emotions, but flat affect severity influences neural responses in areas like the amygdala. This suggests emotion perception is largely intact, but symptom severity impacts specific brain regions.

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Brain Imaging Investigation of the Neural Correlates of Emotion Regulation

Brain Imaging Investigation of the Neural Correlates of Emotion Regulation

Published on: August 26, 2011

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Psychiatry
Cognitive Science

Background:

Schizophrenia is linked to impaired facial emotion perception.
Reduced limbic activity is observed in functional brain imaging studies.
The relationship between flat affect severity and brain activity in emotion perception is understudied.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate neural activity during facial emotion perception in individuals with schizophrenia.
To examine the correlation between flat affect severity and brain activity in schizophrenia patients.
To compare brain activity between schizophrenia patients and healthy controls during facial emotion perception.

Main Methods:

Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used.
26 individuals with schizophrenia and 26 healthy controls participated.
Participants viewed sad, happy, and neutral faces and identified the gender.

Main Results:

Both groups showed similar emotional valence ratings for faces.
Increased brain activity in response to emotional faces was observed in both groups across multiple regions, including the amygdala and prefrontal cortex.
In schizophrenia, flat affect severity correlated with neural activity in the amygdala and parahippocampal regions.

Conclusions:

Brain regions like the amygdala are recruited similarly in schizophrenia and controls for facial emotion perception.
Flat affect severity moderates neural activity in specific regions, including the left amygdala and parahippocampal gyrus.
No significant group differences in amygdala volume were found.