title: Evidence for altered amygdala activation in schizophrenia in an adaptive emotion recognition task.
abstract: Deficits in social cognition seem to present an intermediate phenotype for schizophrenia, and are known to be associated with an altered amygdala response to faces. However, current results are heterogeneous with respect to whether this altered amygdala response in schizophrenia is hypoactive or hyperactive in nature. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate emotion-specific amygdala activation in schizophrenia using a novel adaptive emotion recognition paradigm. Participants comprised 11 schizophrenia outpatients and 16 healthy controls who viewed face stimuli expressing emotions of anger, fear, happiness, and disgust, as well as neutral expressions. The adaptive emotion recognition approach allows the assessment of group differences in both emotion recognition performance and associated neuronal activity while also ensuring a comparable number of correctly recognized emotions between groups. Schizophrenia participants were slower and had a negative bias in emotion recognition. In addition, they showed reduced differential activation during recognition of emotional compared with neutral expressions. Correlation analyses revealed an association of a negative bias with amygdala activation for neutral facial expressions that was specific to the patient group. We replicated previous findings of affected emotion recognition in schizophrenia. Furthermore, we demonstrated that altered amygdala activation in the patient group was associated with the occurrence of a negative bias. These results provide further evidence for impaired social cognition in schizophrenia and point to a central role of the amygdala in negative misperceptions of facial stimuli in schizophrenia.
authors.affiliation: Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany. Electronic address: Daniela.Mier@zi-mannheim.de.
authors.forename: Daniela
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Mier
authors.affiliation: Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany.
authors.forename: Stefanie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lis
authors.affiliation: Justus-Liebig University of Giessen, Giessen, Germany.
authors.forename: Karina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Zygrodnik
authors.affiliation: Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany.
authors.forename: Carina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sauer
authors.affiliation: Justus-Liebig University of Giessen, Giessen, Germany.
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ulferts
authors.affiliation: Justus-Liebig University of Giessen, Giessen, Germany.
authors.forename: Bernd
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gallhofer
authors.affiliation: Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kirsch
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D000679:Amygdala / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D006240:Happiness; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012919:Social Behavior
keywords: Facial affect recognition; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Negative bias; Social cognition