Background
Individuals with schizophrenia demonstrate impaired recognition of facial expressions
and may misattribute emotional salience to otherwise nonsalient stimuli. The neural
mechanisms underlying this deficit and the relationship with different symptoms remain
poorly understood.
Methods
We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure neural responses
to neutral, mildly fearful, and prototypically fearful facial expressions. The sample
included 15 medicated individuals with chronic schizophrenia (SZ) and 11 healthy control
individuals (CON), matched for gender (all male), age, and years of education.
Results
A repeated measures 3 × 2 analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed a significant interaction
between expression intensity and group in right parahippocampal gyrus (p < .01). Individuals with chronic schizophrenia demonstrated a decrease, whereas CON
showed an increase, in right parahippocampal gyrus response to increasingly fearful
expressions. Between-group comparison revealed greater activation in SZ than CON in
right parahippocampal gyrus to neutral faces. The reality distortion dimension, but
not neuroleptic medication dose, was positively associated with the right parahippocampal
gyral and right amygdalar response to neutral faces in SZ.
Conclusions
An abnormally increased parahippocampal response to neutral faces was positively associated
with reality distortion in SZ. This may underlie the previously reported finding of
a misattribution of emotional salience to nonsalient social stimuli in schizophrenia.
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: February 17, 2006
Accepted:
November 23,
2005
Received in revised form:
November 8,
2005
Received:
July 7,
2005
Identification
Copyright
© 2006 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
