Zhao Yanli, Wang Zhiren, Zhang Yueyao, Zhang Yuanyuan, Zhang Jinguo, Li Dong, Xiao Chunling, Tan Shuping, Zhang Dandan
Psychiatry Research Center, Beijing Huilongguan Hospital, Peking University Huilonguan Clinical Medical School, Beijing, China.
College of Psychology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China.
Front Psychiatry. 2021 Apr 7;12:591401. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2021.591401. eCollection 2021.
Impairments in self-representation are relevant to the expression of psychosis. To date, the characteristics and neural mechanisms of self-impairment in schizophrenia remain unclear. To this end, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to measure brain activity in 56 first-episode patients with schizophrenia and 56 healthy controls. Participants judged personal trait adjectives regarding themselves, their mothers, or a public person, followed by an unexpected old/new recognition test. The recognition score for mother-reference adjectives was lower than that for self-reference adjectives in patients, while the control group showed comparatively high recognition scores for both self- and mother-referential adjectives. In addition, control subjects recognized more negative words, while patients remembered more positive words. ERP data revealed that controls exhibited typical task effects (self-reference = mother-reference > other-reference) during both automatic attention and effortful encoding periods [indexed by P2 and the late positive potential (LPP), respectively]. In contrast, patients only exhibited the task effect in the P2 amplitude. Moreover, controls exhibited larger P2 amplitudes during encoding negative than positive words, whereas patients had enhanced LPP amplitudes during memory retrieval of positive compared to negative words. These findings demonstrated self-representation dysfunction in first-episode schizophrenic patients in mother (the intimate other) referential processing and the absence of a negative memory bias.
自我表征受损与精神病的表现有关。迄今为止，精神分裂症患者自我损伤的特征和神经机制仍不清楚。为此，我们使用事件相关电位（ERP）来测量56例首发精神分裂症患者和56名健康对照者的大脑活动。参与者对关于自己、母亲或公众人物的个人特质形容词进行判断，随后进行意外的旧/新识别测试。患者中母亲参照形容词的识别分数低于自我参照形容词，而对照组对自我和母亲参照形容词的识别分数相对较高。此外，对照组识别出更多的消极词汇，而患者记住更多的积极词汇。ERP数据显示，在自动注意和努力编码阶段（分别由P2和晚期正电位（LPP）索引），对照组表现出典型的任务效应（自我参照=母亲参照>他人参照）。相比之下，患者仅在P2波幅上表现出任务效应。此外，对照组在编码消极词汇时的P2波幅大于积极词汇，而患者在记忆检索积极词汇时的LPP波幅相对于消极词汇增强。这些发现表明首发精神分裂症患者在母亲（亲密他人）参照加工中存在自我表征功能障碍，且不存在负性记忆偏差。
