Neuroscience Program, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA.
Schizophr Bull. 2011 Sep;37(5):1027-38. doi: 10.1093/schbul/sbq009. Epub 2010 Feb 22.
Research on emotional processing in schizophrenia suggests relatively intact subjective responses to affective stimuli "in the moment." However, neuroimaging evidence suggests diminished activation in brain regions associated with emotional processing in schizophrenia. We asked whether given a more vulnerable cognitive system in schizophrenia, individuals with this disorder would show increased or decreased modulation of working memory (WM) as a function of the emotional content of stimuli compared with healthy control subjects. In addition, we examined whether higher anhedonia levels were associated with a diminished impact of emotion on behavioral and brain activation responses. In the present study, 38 individuals with schizophrenia and 32 healthy individuals completed blocks of a 2-back WM task in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning session. Blocks contained faces displaying either only neutral stimuli or neutral and emotional stimuli (happy or fearful faces), randomly intermixed and occurring both as targets and non-targets. Both groups showed higher accuracy but slower reaction time for negative compared to neutral stimuli. Individuals with schizophrenia showed intact amygdala activity in response to emotionally evocative stimuli, but demonstrated altered dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and hippocampal activity while performing an emotionally loaded WM-task. Higher levels of social anhedonia were associated with diminished amygdala responses to emotional stimuli and increased DLPFC activity in individuals with schizophrenia. Emotional arousal may challenge dorsal-frontal control systems, which may have both beneficial and detrimental influences. Our findings suggest that disturbances in emotional processing in schizophrenia relate to alterations in emotion-cognition interactions rather than to the perception and subjective experience of emotion per se.
精神分裂症的情绪处理研究表明，患者对情感刺激的主观反应在“当下”相对完整。然而，神经影像学证据表明，精神分裂症患者与情绪处理相关的大脑区域的激活减少。我们想知道，鉴于精神分裂症患者的认知系统较为脆弱，与健康对照组相比，他们的工作记忆（WM）是否会因刺激的情绪内容而增加或减少调节。此外，我们还研究了较高的快感缺失水平是否与情绪对行为和大脑激活反应的影响减弱有关。在本研究中，38 名精神分裂症患者和 32 名健康个体在功能磁共振成像扫描期间完成了 2 次背靠背 WM 任务的区块。这些区块包含只显示中性刺激或中性和情感刺激（快乐或恐惧的脸）的面孔，随机混合，既作为目标又作为非目标出现。两组对负性刺激的准确性都较高，但反应时间较慢。与中性刺激相比，精神分裂症患者的杏仁核对情感刺激的反应保持正常，但在执行情感负荷 WM 任务时，背外侧前额叶皮层（DLPFC）和海马体的活动发生改变。社会快感缺失程度较高与精神分裂症患者的杏仁核对情绪刺激的反应减弱和 DLPFC 活动增加有关。情绪唤醒可能会挑战背侧额叶控制系统，这可能既有有益的影响，也有不利的影响。我们的研究结果表明，精神分裂症中的情绪处理障碍与情绪认知相互作用的改变有关，而不是与情绪本身的感知和主观体验有关。
