Empathy and Mood Awareness Reflected in the Resting-state Brain Metabolic Activity in the Patients with Schizophrenia and Normal Subjects

Objectives : Empathy has been conceptualized as the ability of emotional resonance and perspective-taking. Emotional awareness has been proposed as the basis of empathy. In this study we examined the relationship between empathy and mood awareness and their neural correlates in resting-state activity in normal controls and patients with schizophrenia. Methods : Empathy and mood awareness scale scores were compared between 29 patients with schizophrenia and 21 normal controls by voxel-based t-tests and voxel-based correlation analyses of resting-state 18F-FDG PET images. Results : Empathy and mood labeling scale scores were significantly decreased in schizophrenic patients. Mood monitoring was positively correlated with empathy score in normal controls, but not in schizophrenic patients. In normal controls, empathy was positively correlated with resting-state activities in the intraparietal sulcus and mood monitoring was positively correlated with the temporal pole, frontopolar cortex, inferior temporal gyrus, entorhinal cortex and the subgenual prefrontal cortex resting activities. The orbitofrontal cortex resting activity was positively correlated with mood monitoring-related subgenual prefrontal cortex activity in the normal controls. Patients with schizophrenia showed decreased orbitofrontal resting activity and loss of its correlations with mood monitoring-related regional activities. Conclusion : This study showed that alteration in the resting-state activity in schizophrenia may reflect dysfunctional empathy and distorted characteristic of emotional awareness. However, the resting-state activity may not reflect the relationship between emotional awareness and empathy.ope

Studies on the cell growth inhibitory compounds of Ginseng

학위논문(박사)--서울대학교 대학원 :약학과 약품분석학전공,2002.Docto

環境稅 導入方案에 관한 硏究

학위논문(석사)--서울大學校 行政大學院 :行政學科 行政學專攻,1995.Maste

정신분열병 환자군의 정상대조군 간 정서적 역전 연합의 방향성에 따른 뇌활성화 차이

Dept. of Medicine/박사The dopaminergic mesolimbic pathway, a classical neural system involved in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, has been implicated as a core neural system for processing motivationally salient information that is either rewarding or aversive. Affective bias in reversal learning, where reattributing appropriate rewarding values is difficult whereas false aversive values is easy, may underlie clinical manifestations of schizophrenia, such as paranoid delusions and avolition. The present study investigated the affective bias in reversal learning and its underlying neural process in the cortico-striato-limbic network in patients with schizophrenia. Fifteen healthy participants and 14 outpatients with schizophrenia underwent an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning while performing a monetary incentive contingency reversal task. Patients had higher physical and social anhedonia scale score than healthy controls. Both groups showed greater accuracy when reversing from punishment-to-reward contingency than vice versa without group differences. While healthy controls showed unidirectional acceleration in reaction time when reversing from punishment-to-reward contingency, patients showed significantly diminished punishment-to-reward reversal acceleration. In healthy controls, the anterior cingulate cortex was significantly activated and the amygdala, putamen, and the lateral orbitofrontal cortex activations were also identified during reversal response. In patients with schizophrenia only reversal response-related lateral orbitofrontal cortex activations were identified. Unidirectional punishment-to-reward reversal activations were observed in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex in both groups and in the anterior cingulate gyrus in healthy controls only. Physical anhedonia score correlated with reversal response-related anterior cingulate activity changes in healthy controls, whereas physical and social anhednoia scale scores and PANSS negative symptom scores correlated with the lateral orbitofrontal cortex in the patients. These finding suggest that deficiency in anticipation and engagement in reversing instrumental behavior to obtain reward reflected in the blunted anterior cingulate and compensatory lateral orbitofrontal activity may underlie the neural pathophysiology of anhedonia/avolition in schizophrenia.ope

E. 캇시러의 상징형식으로서 예술에 관한 연구

학위논문(박사)--서울大學校 大學院 :美學科,1996.Docto

The Relationship between Cortical Activation during an Inference Task and Presence in the Virtual Environment in Patients with Schizophrenia：An fMRI Study

OBJECTIVES: Virtual reality has been increasingly used in the psychiatric field. Presence, the sense of "being there," is an essential concept in terms of the effectiveness of the virtual reality. The present study aimed to investigate the characteristics of the presence-related brain regions in patients with schizophrenia. METHODS: Using fMRI, brain activities were measured while performing the virtual reality tasks in fifteen healthy normal subjects and fifteen patients with schizophrenia. The tasks consisted of listening to some stories and inferring the content of the previous events. Ambiguous information was given for the experimental task, whereas clear information was given for the control task. Correlations between the image contrast values and the presence scores were analyzed. RESULTS: The presence-related brain regions in healthy controls were identified in the two discrete region groups that could be referred to as the cognitive neural correlates and the perceptual neural correlates. The former included the anterior cingulate, the left inferior temporal gyrus, the right lingual gyrus, and the right cuneus, whereas the latter consisted of the right posterior cingulate, the left lingual gyrus and the right fusiform gyrus. Compared with healthy controls, regional correlation patterns were different in patients with schizophrenia, including that the posterior cingulate had significant correlations. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that patients with schizophrenia utilize perceptual apparatus for the presence more than the cognitive aspect. A peculiar pattern of the presence in schizophrenia may be related to increased correlations between the posterior cingulate and other brain regions.ope

(The) effect of group conformity response to the semantic processing in patients with schizophrenia

의학과/석사[한글] 본 연구는 정신분열병 환자에서의 단어 의미처리과정에 있어 집단의 영향을 동조(conformity) 반응을 통해 알아보고자 하였다. 임상실습조에 속한 의대학생 23명과 낮병원, 정신보건센터 프로그램에 다니는 정신분열병 환자 19명을 대상으로 집단의 의견에 노출시킨 후 동형이의어(homograph) 단어의 우위의미를 판단하는 과제를 수행하게 하여 소속 집단구성원 3명, 타인 3명, 단순 정보 3개와 의견이 일치 또는 불일치하는 조건 하에 동조반응을 보이는 반응율와 반응시간을 측정하였다. 연구결과, 정상대조군의 경우, 의견 불일치 조건시의 동조 경향에 대한 소속 집단의 영향은 타인의 영향에 비해 유의미한 차이가 없었으나 의견의 일치 여부와 무관한 동조 반응시간은 타인과 단순 정보에 비해 소속 집단의 의견에 동조할 때가 유의미하게 더 짧았다. 그에 반해 정신분열병 환자군은 의견 불일치 조건시의 동조 경향에 대한 소속 집단의 영향이 타인에 비해 유의미하게 컸고 의견 일치 여부와 무관한 동조 반응시간은 유의미한 차이가 없었다. 이는 정신분열병 환자가 소속 집단에 대한 선호도가 있음을 보여주고 동조 반응의 비효율성이 있어 집단을 이용한 효율적이고 전략적인 문제해결능력 면에서의 사회행동 장애가 있음을 시사한다. [영문]This study examined the effect of group on semantic processing in schizophrenia through conformity response. Twenty three medical school students from four clinical training groups and 19 schizophrenic patients from two day-hospital programs and one mental health center performed a semantic judgment task of the dominant meaning of a series of homograph words after exposure to opinions of the subject’s group members, strangers and simple information which may or may not agree with the subject. The conformity response rate and the conformity response time were measured. The control subjects did not show significant difference in the effect of the group compared to strangers on the conformity tendency, however they performed faster in conformity response regardless of opinions. Patients with schizophrenia showed significant difference in the effect of group on the conformity tendency when compared to the effect of strangers. Response time of conformity response regardless of opinions showed no significant difference between group and stranger or information in the patient group. This finding suggests that patients with schizophrenia may prefer their group in semantic judgment, while inefficient conformity response point to the dysfunction of efficient strategic problem solving skills using the group.ope

Relationship between the Level of Insight and Memory Distortion about the First Admission in Patients with Schizophrenia

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to test the hypothesis that the level of current insight in patients with schizophrenia may affect autobiographical memory about their previous psychiatric history. METHODS: 28 patients with schizophrenia were interviewed with a newly designed questionnaire to report their memories about symptoms and situations during the first psychiatric admission. The subjects' memory reports were compared with their medical records. The error ratio was compared between the good and poor insight groups. RESULTS: The poor insight group demonstrated less true responses and more miss responses to the question about the existence of delusion, and more miss responses to the questions about the details of the hallucination than the good insight group. The insight level was correlated with miss ratio of the responses to questions about details of delusion. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that poor current insight in patients with schizophrenia may be related to larger distortion of autobiographical memories about certain symptoms of theirs.ope

Prefrontal functional dissociation in the semantic network of patients with schizophrenia

We examined whether deficient prefrontal control over the semantic network exists in patients with schizophrenia. Fourteen patients with schizophrenia and 14 healthy controls performed a comparison task, judging semantic congruity according to an abstract category in an event-related functional MRI paradigm. In the control group, prefrontal-temporal networks consisting of the left inferior frontal gyrus and right inferior frontal sulcus converging at the left posterior superior temporal sulcus were identified as activated during semantic demand of incongruence. In the patients with schizophrenia, we observed a loss of the recruitment of the right inferior frontal sulcus and the prefrontal-temporal network. These findings indicate that cognitive modulation of semantic processing may be dysfunctional in patients with schizophrenia.ope

Dysfunctional modulation of emotional interference in the medial prefrontal cortex in patients with schizophrenia

Patients with schizophrenia have impairment in cognitive-emotional interaction that is reflected in delusion formation and poor social functioning. Although monitoring deficits in the anterior cingulate have been observed in schizophrenia, the involvement of the affective division of the anterior cingulate implicated in cognitive modulation of emotional processing has not been directly addressed in schizophrenia. In this study, we examined the function of the affective division of the anterior cingulate and the related neural systems by using a modified emotional Stroop fMRI paradigm. Fourteen patients with schizophrenia and fourteen healthy controls performed an emotional appraisal task with semantically relevant emotional interferences during fMRI scanning. The patients with schizophrenia were significantly less efficient than the healthy controls during the emotional incongruence trials. When emotionally incongruent trials were compared to congruent trials, relative deactivations of the subgenual cingulate gyrus and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex observed in the healthy controls were not found in the patient group and activities of these regions inversely correlated with emotional interference to performance efficiency and response accuracy respectively in the patient group. In addition, relative activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was observed only in the patient group. These findings suggest that deficit in cognitive modulation over emotional interference in patients with schizophrenia may be explained by failure in suppressing the affective division of the anterior cingulate despite attentional effort. This may provide evidence for the failure in suppressing the bottom-up processing of emotion during cognitive-emotional interaction in schizophrenia.ope