Herold Róbert, Varga Eszter, Hajnal András, Hamvas Edina, Berecz Hajnalka, Tóth Borbála, Tényi Tamás
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary.
Front Psychol. 2018 Jan 9;8:2309. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02309. eCollection 2017.
Irony is a type of figurative language in which the literal meaning of the expression is the opposite of what the speaker intends to communicate. Even though schizophrenic patients are known as typically impaired in irony comprehension and in the underlying neural functions, to date no one has explored the neural correlates of figurative language comprehension in first-degree relatives of schizophrenic patients. In the present study, we examined the neural correlates of irony understanding in schizophrenic patients and in unaffected first-degree relatives of patients compared to healthy adults with functional MRI. Our aim was to investigate if possible alterations of the neural circuits supporting irony comprehension in first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia would fulfill the familiality criterion of an endophenotype. We examined 12 schizophrenic patients, 12 first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients and 12 healthy controls with functional MRI while they were performing irony and control tasks. Different phases of irony processing were examined, such as context processing and ironic statement comprehension. Patients had significantly more difficulty understanding irony than controls or relatives. Patients also showed markedly different neural activation pattern compared to controls in both stages of irony processing. Although no significant differences were found in the performance of the irony tasks between the control group and the relative group, during the fMRI analysis, the relatives showed stronger brain activity in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during the context processing phase of irony tasks than the control group. However, the controls demonstrated higher activations in the left dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and in the right inferior frontal gyrus during the ironic statement phase of the irony tasks than the relative group. Our results show that despite good task performance, first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients had alterations in the neural circuits during irony processing. Thus, we suggest that neural alteration of irony comprehension could be a potential endophenotypic marker of schizophrenia.
反讽是一种比喻性语言，其中表达的字面意思与说话者想要传达的意思相反。尽管已知精神分裂症患者在反讽理解及潜在神经功能方面通常受损，但迄今为止，还没有人探究过精神分裂症患者一级亲属在比喻性语言理解方面的神经关联。在本研究中，我们使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI），将精神分裂症患者及其未患病的一级亲属与健康成年人进行比较，以研究反讽理解的神经关联。我们的目的是调查精神分裂症患者一级亲属中支持反讽理解的神经回路是否可能发生改变，这是否符合内表型的家族性标准。我们让12名精神分裂症患者、12名精神分裂症患者的一级亲属和12名健康对照者在执行反讽任务和对照任务时接受功能磁共振成像检查。我们考察了反讽处理的不同阶段，如语境处理和反讽陈述理解。与对照者或亲属相比，患者理解反讽的困难明显更大。在反讽处理的两个阶段，患者与对照者相比，神经激活模式也明显不同。虽然在对照组和亲属组之间的反讽任务表现上未发现显著差异，但在功能磁共振成像分析中，亲属在反讽任务的语境处理阶段，其左侧背外侧前额叶皮层的脑活动比对照组更强。然而，在反讽任务的反讽陈述阶段，对照组在左侧背内侧前额叶皮层和右侧额下回的激活程度比亲属组更高。我们的结果表明，尽管任务表现良好，但精神分裂症患者的一级亲属在反讽处理过程中神经回路存在改变。因此，我们认为反讽理解的神经改变可能是精神分裂症的一种潜在内表型标记。
