Altered lateralisation of emotional prosody processing in schizophrenia.
Alterations of cerebral lateralisation in schizophrenia have been reported consistently, and a reduced left-lateralisation has been suggested for language functions. Speech contains non-verbal information, e.g. prosody, and on a behavioural level, the extraction of emotional information from prosody is often impaired in schizophrenia. A previous functional magnetic resonance imaging study suggests increased left-lateralisation in schizophrenia during prosody processing, but did not disentangle effects of speech processing as such and emotional prosody processing. Here, we used meaningless syllables spoken with neutral, angry or fearful speech melody and measured blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) responses in 15 in-patients with schizophrenia and 15 healthy control participants matched for age and gender. Lateralisation indices were calculated for responses to emotional versus neutral prosody, and for all types of prosody versus baseline. Compared to control participants, patients with schizophrenia showed an increased right-lateralisation of emotional and non-emotional prosody processing in the temporal and parietal cortex. This right-lateralisation was increased in patients with reduced right-handedness and decreased in patients with stronger negative symptoms, particularly affective blunting, and with longer hospitalisation. Although patients with schizophrenia performed worse in emotion identification, this deficit was not related to lateralisation indices. Enhanced right-lateralisation to prosody resembles previous findings on laterality changes in speech processing and might suggest a common underlying cause in the organization of language functions.
Bach
Dominik R
DR
University Hospital of Psychiatry, University of Bern, Bolligenstrasse 111, 3000 Bern 60, Switzerland. d.bach@fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk
Herdener
Marcus
M
Grandjean
Didier
D
Sander
David
D
Seifritz
Erich
E
Strik
Werner K
WK
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001931:Brain Mapping; D000077463:Carbamide Peroxide; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000098:blood supply / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004338:Drug Combinations; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods; D007802:Language; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000098:blood supply / Q000503:physiopathology; D010545:Peroxides / Q000097:blood; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology; D014508:Urea / Q000031:analogs & derivatives / Q000097:blood; D055815:Young Adult
D004338:Drug Combinations; D010545:Peroxides; D000077463:Carbamide Peroxide; D014508:Urea