title: Comparison of visual perceptual organization in schizophrenia and body dysmorphic disorder.
abstract: People with schizophrenia are impaired at organizing potentially ambiguous visual information into well-formed shape and object representations. This perceptual organization (PO) impairment has not been found in other psychiatric disorders. However, recent data on body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), suggest that BDD may also be characterized by reduced PO. Similarities between these groups could have implications for understanding the RDoC dimension of visual perception in psychopathology, and for modeling symptom formation across these two conditions. We compared patients with SCZ (n=24) to those with BDD (n=20), as well as control groups of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients (n=20) and healthy controls (n=20), on two measures of PO that have been reliably associated with schizophrenia-related performance impairment. On both the contour integration and Ebbinghaus illusion tests, only the SCZ group demonstrated abnormal performance relative to controls; the BDD group performed similarly to the OCD and CON groups. In addition, on both tasks, the SCZ group performed more abnormally than the BDD group. Overall, these data suggest that PO reductions observed in SCZ are not present in BDD. Visual processing impairments in BDD may arise instead from other perceptual disturbances or attentional biases related to emotional factors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and University Behavioral Health Care, Rutgers University, 151 Centennial Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA. Electronic address: steven.silverstein@rutgers.edu.
authors.forename: Steven M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Silverstein
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Corinna M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Elliott
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Jamie D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Feusner
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and University Behavioral Health Care, Rutgers University, 151 Centennial Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA.
authors.forename: Brian P
authors.initials: BP
authors.lastname: Keane
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and University Behavioral Health Care, Rutgers University, 151 Centennial Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA.
authors.forename: Deepthi
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Mikkilineni
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Natasha
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Hansen
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hartmann
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Sabine
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wilhelm
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D057215:Body Dysmorphic Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009771:Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000175:diagnosis*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D014796:Visual Perception
keywords: Body dysmorphic disorder; Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder; Perception; Perceptual organization; RDoC; Schizophrenia; Vision