Ji Ellen, Weickert Cynthia Shannon, Lenroot Rhoshel, Catts Stanley V, Vercammen Ans, White Christopher, Gur Raquel E, Weickert Thomas W
School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Randwick, NSW 2031, Australia; Neuroscience Research Australia, Randwick, NSW 2031, Australia.
School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Randwick, NSW 2031, Australia; Neuroscience Research Australia, Randwick, NSW 2031, Australia; Schizophrenia Research Institute, Darlinghurst, NSW 2010, Australia.
Behav Brain Res. 2015 Jun 1;286:338-46. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2015.03.020. Epub 2015 Mar 18.
Growing evidence suggests that testosterone may play a role in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia given that testosterone has been linked to cognition and negative symptoms in schizophrenia. Here, we determine the extent to which serum testosterone levels are related to neural activity in affective processing circuitry in men with schizophrenia. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to measure blood-oxygen-level-dependent signal changes as 32 healthy controls and 26 people with schizophrenia performed a facial emotion identification task. Whole brain analyses were performed to determine regions of differential activity between groups during processing of angry versus non-threatening faces. A follow-up ROI analysis using a regression model in a subset of 16 healthy men and 16 men with schizophrenia was used to determine the extent to which serum testosterone levels were related to neural activity. Healthy controls displayed significantly greater activation than people with schizophrenia in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). There was no significant difference in circulating testosterone levels between healthy men and men with schizophrenia. Regression analyses between activation in the IFG and circulating testosterone levels revealed a significant positive correlation in men with schizophrenia (r=.63, p=.01) and no significant relationship in healthy men. This study provides the first evidence that circulating serum testosterone levels are related to IFG activation during emotion face processing in men with schizophrenia but not in healthy men, which suggests that testosterone levels modulate neural processes relevant to facial emotion processing that may interfere with social functioning in men with schizophrenia.
越来越多的证据表明，鉴于睾酮与精神分裂症的认知和阴性症状有关，它可能在精神分裂症的病理生理学中发挥作用。在此，我们确定血清睾酮水平与精神分裂症男性情感加工回路中神经活动的相关程度。当32名健康对照者和26名精神分裂症患者执行面部情绪识别任务时，使用功能磁共振成像来测量血氧水平依赖信号变化。进行全脑分析以确定在处理愤怒面孔与非威胁性面孔期间两组之间的差异活动区域。在16名健康男性和16名精神分裂症男性的子集中，使用回归模型进行后续ROI分析，以确定血清睾酮水平与神经活动的相关程度。在左侧额下回（IFG），健康对照者的激活明显大于精神分裂症患者。健康男性和精神分裂症男性的循环睾酮水平没有显著差异。IFG激活与循环睾酮水平之间的回归分析显示，精神分裂症男性存在显著正相关（r = 0.63，p = 0.01），而健康男性则无显著关系。这项研究提供了首个证据，表明循环血清睾酮水平与精神分裂症男性在情绪面孔加工过程中的IFG激活有关，而与健康男性无关，这表明睾酮水平调节与面部情绪加工相关的神经过程，这可能会干扰精神分裂症男性的社会功能。
