title: Impaired fronto-temporal processing of emotion in schizophrenia.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Abnormal emotion processing in schizophrenia affects social and functional outcome. Spatiotemporal brain mechanisms underlying this deficit are unclear.
  
  
  METHODS
  Event-related potential (ERP) responses to emotional and neutral face processing during an implicit (gender detection) and an explicit (expression detection) task were compared between a group of healthy volunteers (n=10) and a group of patients with schizophrenia (n=10).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Whereas patients had normal primary visual cortex responses, the early modulation of occipital, temporal, and frontal responses by emotional expression observed in controls was absent in patients. The occipito-temporal N170 amplitude was reduced in patients relative to controls during expression detection, but not during gender detection. Frontal activity within 180-250ms was reduced in patients compared to controls. As opposed to controls, no significant difference was seen in patients at the right temporal electrode (T6) between amplitudes of long-latency ERPs elicited by distinct emotions during the expression detection task.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In patients with schizophrenia, abnormal early extraction of expression-related information in the occipito-temporal cortex (before 170ms) impairs structural encoding of facial expressions (N170) and may disrupt motivation- and task-dependent context processing (180-250ms time window) of expression-related facial features. Moreover, top-down neuromodulation from frontal and limbic structures to visual occipito-temporal cortex may not be sufficient to optimize the extraction of expression-specific face features.
authors.affiliation: Service du Professeur Dalery, centre hospitalier Le Vinatier, université Lyon-1, EA 3092, 95, boulevard Pinel, 69677 Bron cedex, France. benoit.bediou@ch-le-vinatier.fr <benoit.bediou@ch-le-vinatier.fr>
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Bediou
authors.forename: M-A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Hénaff
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Bertrand
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Brunelin
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: d'Amato
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Saoud
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Krolak-Salmon
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009778:Occipital Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D012938:Social Perception; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology*; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology