Functional deficit of the medial prefrontal cortex during emotional sentence attribution in schizophrenia.
Functional brain imaging research has already demonstrated that patients with schizophrenia had difficulties with emotion processing, namely in facial emotion perception and emotional prosody. However, the moderating effect of social context and the boundary of perceptual categories of emotion attribution remain unclear. This study investigated the neural bases of emotional sentence attribution in schizophrenia.



Twenty-one schizophrenia patients and 25 healthy subjects underwent an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm including two tasks: one to classify sentences according to their emotional content, and the other to classify neutral sentences according to their grammatical person.



First, patients showed longer response times as compared to controls only during the emotion attribution task. Second, patients with schizophrenia showed reduction of activation in bilateral auditory areas irrespective of the presence of emotions. Lastly, during emotional sentences attribution, patients displayed less activation than controls in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC).



We suggest that the functional abnormality observed in the mPFC during the emotion attribution task could provide a biological basis for social cognition deficits in patients with schizophrenia.
Imagerie et Stratégies Thérapeutiques de la Schizophrénie (ISTS), Normandie Univ, UNICAEN, 14000 Caen, France.
Annick
A
Razafimandimby
Groupe d'Imagerie Neurofonctionnelle, UMR5296 CNRS, CEA, Université de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France.
Pierre-Yves
PY
Hervé
Imagerie et Stratégies Thérapeutiques de la Schizophrénie (ISTS), Normandie Univ, UNICAEN, 14000 Caen, France; CHU de Caen, Service de Psychiatrie, Centre Esquirol, Caen F-14000, France.
Vincent
V
Marzloff
Imagerie et Stratégies Thérapeutiques de la Schizophrénie (ISTS), Normandie Univ, UNICAEN, 14000 Caen, France; CHU de Caen, Service de Psychiatrie, Centre Esquirol, Caen F-14000, France.
Perrine
P
Brazo
Groupe d'Imagerie Neurofonctionnelle, UMR5296 CNRS, CEA, Université de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France.
Nathalie
N
Tzourio-Mazoyer
Imagerie et Stratégies Thérapeutiques de la Schizophrénie (ISTS), Normandie Univ, UNICAEN, 14000 Caen, France; CHU de Caen, Service de Psychiatrie, Centre Esquirol, Caen F-14000, France. Electronic address: dollfus-s@chu-caen.fr.
Sonia
S
Dollfus
D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011930:Reaction Time; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012938:Social Perception; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D056345:Theory of Mind / Q000502:physiology
Emotion; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Language; Schizophrenia; Social cognition; Theory of mind