Blackford J U, Williams L E, Heckers S
Department of Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, 1601 23rd Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37212, United States.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin Psychiatric Institute & Clinics, 6001 Research Park Blvd., Madison, WI 53719, United States.
Schizophr Res. 2015 May;164(1-3):203-9. doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2015.03.019. Epub 2015 Apr 9.
Social impairments are a hallmark feature of schizophrenia and are a key predictor of functional disability. Deficits in social information processing likely underlie social impairment; however, this relationship is understudied. We previously demonstrated that patients with schizophrenia fail to habituate to neutral faces, providing evidence for an alteration in basic social information processing. It remains unknown whether patients with schizophrenia also show deficits in processing of more complex social information. Out-group bias provides an excellent opportunity to test complex social information processing because the bias requires basic face processing skills, the ability to discriminate between groups, as well as the ability to categorize oneself into a salient social group.
Study participants were 23 patients with schizophrenia and 21 controls. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, habituation of response to 120 s of repeated presentations of faces was assessed in participants who viewed either same-gender faces or opposite-gender faces. The interaction between face gender (same/opposite) and group was examined in three key regions: amygdala, hippocampus, and visual cortex. Social impairment was measured using the PANSS and correlations between social impairment and out-group effect (main effect of face type) were performed in patients.
Patients with schizophrenia had aberrant neural responses to opposite-gender faces (interaction, p<.05 corrected). Healthy controls showed an immediate heightened response to opposite-gender faces relative to same-gender faces; but in patients this effect was substantially delayed (~70s). In patients with schizophrenia, the out-group bias was significantly correlated with social impairment. Patients with no social impairment showed a heightened neural response to opposite-gender faces after 30s, whereas patients with mild-moderate social impairment failed to ever show a heightened response.
Alterations in neural responses during out-group processing predicted degree of social impairment in patients with schizophrenia; thus, neural responses to opposite-gender faces may provide a novel measure for studies of treatment response and disease outcome.
社交障碍是精神分裂症的标志性特征，也是功能残疾的关键预测指标。社交信息处理缺陷可能是社交障碍的潜在原因；然而，这种关系尚未得到充分研究。我们之前证明，精神分裂症患者无法对面孔产生习惯化，这为基本社交信息处理的改变提供了证据。目前尚不清楚精神分裂症患者在处理更复杂的社交信息时是否也存在缺陷。群体外偏见为测试复杂社交信息处理提供了一个绝佳机会，因为这种偏见需要基本的面部处理技能、区分群体的能力以及将自己归类到一个显著社会群体的能力。
研究参与者包括23名精神分裂症患者和21名对照者。使用功能磁共振成像，在观看同性面孔或异性面孔的参与者中，评估对120秒重复呈现面孔的反应习惯化情况。在三个关键区域：杏仁核、海马体和视觉皮层中，检查面孔性别（同性/异性）与组之间的相互作用。使用阳性和阴性症状量表（PANSS）测量社交障碍，并在患者中进行社交障碍与群体外效应（面孔类型的主效应）之间的相关性分析。
精神分裂症患者对异性面孔有异常的神经反应（相互作用，校正后p<0.05）。健康对照者相对于同性面孔，对异性面孔立即表现出增强的反应；但在患者中，这种效应显著延迟（约70秒）。在精神分裂症患者中，群体外偏见与社交障碍显著相关。没有社交障碍的患者在30秒后对异性面孔表现出增强的神经反应，而轻度至中度社交障碍的患者从未表现出增强的反应。
群体外处理过程中的神经反应改变预测了精神分裂症患者的社交障碍程度；因此，对异性面孔的神经反应可能为治疗反应和疾病转归的研究提供一种新的测量方法。
