School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA.
Trinity College Institute for Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
Neuropsychologia. 2021 Jul 16;157:107880. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107880. Epub 2021 May 4.
Research demonstrates a relationship between faulty visual attention and poorer social cognition in schizophrenia. One potential explanatory model suggests abnormal neuromodulation in specific neural networks may result in reduced attention to socially important cues, leading to poorer understanding of another's emotional state or intentions.
The current study experimentally manipulated neural networks using tDCS to examine this potential causal mechanism. The primary aim was to determine whether stimulation to the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) improves visual attention, and secondary aims were to determine whether 1) stimulation improves social cognitive performance and 2) visual attention moderates this improved performance.
Using a double-blind crossover design, 69 individuals with schizophrenia underwent both active and sham stimulation to either the rTPJ of the ventral attention network (n = 36) or the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex of the social brain network (dmPFC; n = 33). Following stimulation, participants completed tasks assessing emotion recognition and mentalizing. Concurrent eye tracking assessed visual attention, measuring proportion of time spent attending to areas of interest.
For emotion recognition, stimulation failed to impact either visual attention or social cognitive task accuracy. Similarly, neurostimulation failed to affect visual attention on the mentalizing task. However, exploratory analyses demonstrated that mentalizing accuracy significantly improved after stimulation to the active comparator, dmPFC, with no improvement after stimulation to rTPJ.
Results demonstrate limited effect of a single stimulation session on visual attention and emotion recognition accuracy but provide initial support for an alternate neural mechanism for mentalizing, highlighting the importance of executive functions over visual attention.
研究表明，精神分裂症患者的视觉注意力缺陷与较差的社会认知能力之间存在关联。一种潜在的解释模型表明，特定神经网络中的神经调节异常可能导致对社交重要线索的注意力减少，从而导致对他人情绪状态或意图的理解能力下降。
本研究通过经颅直流电刺激（tDCS）实验性地操纵神经网络，以检验这种潜在的因果机制。主要目的是确定刺激右侧颞顶联合区（rTPJ）是否能提高视觉注意力，次要目的是确定 1）刺激是否能提高社会认知表现，以及 2）视觉注意力是否能调节这种提高的表现。
使用双盲交叉设计，69 名精神分裂症患者接受了 rTPJ 的真刺激或假刺激（ ventral attention network，n=36）或 dmPFC 的真刺激或假刺激（social brain network，dmPFC，n=33）。刺激后，参与者完成了情绪识别和心理化任务。同时进行眼动追踪以评估视觉注意力，测量注视感兴趣区域的时间比例。
对于情绪识别，刺激既没有影响视觉注意力，也没有影响社会认知任务的准确性。同样，神经刺激也没有影响心理化任务中的视觉注意力。然而，探索性分析表明，刺激 dmPFC（active comparator）后，心理化的准确性显著提高，而刺激 rTPJ 后则没有提高。
结果表明，单次刺激对视觉注意力和情绪识别准确性的影响有限，但为心理化的替代神经机制提供了初步支持，突出了执行功能相对于视觉注意力的重要性。
