Yamada Makiko, Ueda Keita, Namiki Chihiro, Hirao Kazuyuki, Hayashi Takuji, Ohigashi Yoshitaka, Murai Toshiya
Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, 54 Kawara-cho, Shogoin, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8507, Japan.
Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2009 Jun;259(4):227-33. doi: 10.1007/s00406-008-0860-5. Epub 2009 Feb 17.
The structural and functional abnormalities of the frontal lobes, the region implicated in social information processing, have been suspected to underlie social cognitive impairments in schizophrenia. However, multiple structures, including the limbic/paralimbic areas that are also important for social cognition, have been reported to be abnormal in schizophrenia. The aim of this study is to investigate the extent to which the frontal lobe dysfunction accounts for social cognitive impairments in schizophrenia by comparing with patients who have focal frontal lobe injuries. Social cognitive abilities, focusing on affective aspects, were examined by an emotion intensity recognition task, which is sensitive to the amygdala function, and the emotion attribution tasks, which rely mainly on the frontal lobe function. Individuals with schizophrenia were impaired on the emotion intensity recognition task as well as on the emotion attribution tasks as compared with healthy subjects. By contrast, the frontal lobe-damaged group was defective in the emotion attribution tasks but not in the emotion intensity recognition task. Our results indicated that social cognitive impairments observed in schizophrenia can be accounted for partly by their frontal lobe pathology. Other aspects of social cognitive impairments could also be associated with the extra-frontal pathology, such as the amygdala.
额叶是涉及社会信息处理的脑区，其结构和功能异常被怀疑是精神分裂症社会认知障碍的潜在原因。然而，据报道，包括对社会认知也很重要的边缘/边缘旁区域在内的多个脑区在精神分裂症中均存在异常。本研究的目的是通过与患有局灶性额叶损伤的患者进行比较，来探究额叶功能障碍在多大程度上导致了精神分裂症的社会认知障碍。通过一项对杏仁核功能敏感的情绪强度识别任务以及主要依赖额叶功能的情绪归因任务，对聚焦于情感方面的社会认知能力进行了检查。与健康受试者相比，精神分裂症患者在情绪强度识别任务和情绪归因任务上均表现受损。相比之下，额叶损伤组在情绪归因任务上存在缺陷，但在情绪强度识别任务上没有缺陷。我们的结果表明，精神分裂症中观察到的社会认知障碍部分可归因于其额叶病变。社会认知障碍的其他方面也可能与额叶以外的病变有关，比如杏仁核。
