Distinctive brain responses to emotional pictures in men and women with schizophrenia: an ERP study
M.
E.
Lavoie1, 2,
A.
Mancini-Marïe1, 2,
J.C
Jiménez1, 2,
M.
Rinaldi1, 2,
E.
Stip1, 2,
E.
Esmanliu1, 2,
F.
Guillem1, 2 and
Adrianna
Mendrek1, 2*
-
1
Department of Psychiatry, University of Montréal, Canada
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2
Fernand-Seguin Research Center, Louis-H Lafontaine Hospital, Canada
Context: Abnormal emotion processing is highly frequent in schizophrenia and affects social and functional outcome. Earlier event-related potential (ERP) research investigating processing of affective stimuli in schizophrenia was done mainly with facial expressions and revealed impaired facial emotion recognition in patients relative to control subjects. However, brain responses to emotional photographic pictures were not applied in the context of schizophrenia. Moreover, emotional differentiation between male and female patients was not done before with ERPs. Goal: The aim of the current research is to investigate brain electro-cortical activity in schizophrenia men and women in response to emotional images. Methodology: ERP components were analyzed in 22 patients with schizophrenia (12 men and 10 women) and 18 control participants (12 men and 6 women) matched for age and intelligence. ERPs were obtained from 56 EEG electrodes during the presentation of 100 photographic images divided into four categories (unpleasant-high arousal, unpleasant-low arousal, pleasant-high arousal and pleasant-low arousal) selected from the International Affective Picture System. A subjective evaluation of each image was done after each experiment and the results obtained from the schizophrenia patients were compared to those of the control group. The late positive component (LPC) mean amplitude, at 300 to 700 ms post-stimulus onset, was analyzed using repeated-measures analyses of variance (MANOVA). The analysis comprised two between-groups factors including group (schizophrenic vs. control) and sex. The following within-groups factors included: valence with two levels (high vs. low), arousal with two levels (high vs. low), brain regions with six levels (anterior-frontal, frontal, fronto-central, central, centro-parietal and parietal). Results: The first finding is that patients with schizophrenia and control subjects gave comparable subjective evaluations of arousal and valence. ERP results showed that both men and women with schizophrenia presented smaller LPC at the anterior and central regions. More specifically, female patiens showed smaller LPC amplitude and were less reactive to emotional valence than the control group (group by valence: F[1,12]= 11.34, p< .01). In schizophrenia men, the LPC was also reduced, but they were less reactive to the arousal content than the control group (group by arousal: F[1,12]= 11.34, p<.01). Conclusion: Altogether, our results revealed that while the subjective evaluation of emotional pictures is equivalent across groups, differences are present in the way the brain of men and women with schizophrenia process the emotional content. This finding provides further support for the notion of a possible discrepancy between the subjective experience and the physiological expression of emotions in schizophrenia patients, as suggested by Bleuler. Additionnally, the sex differences found in brain activity revealed that men and women with schizophrenia might process emotions differently. Those results open the door to new clinical research investigations in psychiatry, particularly in psychosis.
Conference:
10th International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience, Bodrum, Türkiye, 1 Sep - 5 Sep, 2008.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Neuropsychiatric Disorders
Citation:
Lavoie
ME,
Mancini-Marïe
A,
Jiménez
J,
Rinaldi
M,
Stip
E,
Esmanliu
E,
Guillem
F and
Mendrek
A
(2008). Distinctive brain responses to emotional pictures in men and women with schizophrenia: an ERP study.
Conference Abstract:
10th International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience.
doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.09.2009.01.386
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Received:
16 Dec 2008;
Published Online:
16 Dec 2008.
*
Correspondence:
Adrianna Mendrek, Department of Psychiatry, University of Montréal, Montréal, Canada, amendrek@ubishops.ca