Social Perception in Schizophrenia: Evidence of Occipital and Prefrontal Dysfunction

Individuals with schizophrenia evidence deficits in social functioning such as difficulties in communication, maintaining employment, and functioning as a member of the community. Impairment in functions such as these has been linked with higher order social cognitive deficits, which, in turn, have been associated with abnormalities in brain structure and function. However, it is unclear whether brain abnormalities are found specifically for higher order social cognitive functioning, or whether “lower order” social processing, such as perceiving social stimuli, might demonstrate abnormalities at the neural level. The current study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the neural correlates of social perception in schizophrenia. Individuals with schizophrenia and healthy comparison participants were presented with social (i.e., faces, people) and nonsocial (i.e., scenes, objects) images that varied in affective content (emotional, neutral). Schizophrenia patients showed increased brain activation, compared to controls, in occipital lobe regions associated with early visual processing in response to emotional and neutral social images. They also failed to show prefrontal deactivation that was present in controls in response to neutral social images, which may reflect abnormal default mode activity. Results indicate aberrant neural response during early stages of visual processing of social information, which may contribute to higher order social cognitive deficits characteristic of this population

Emotion Perception in Schizophrenia: A Functional Connectivity Study

Individuals with schizophrenia evidence impairment in multiple aspects of emotional functioning, including emotion expression, perception, and recognition. Neuroimaging research has identified abnormalities in the amygdala as an etiological factor underlying affective impairment in this population. However, the exact nature of amygdala dysfunction remains unclear. The current study utilized psychophysiological interaction analyses to examine functional connectivity between the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) during an emotion perception task. Participants with schizophrenia (SZ) and demographically-matched comparison participants (HC) viewed and rated positive, negative, and neutral images from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) library while undergoing functional neuroimaging. Results revealed a significant group difference in right amygdala-mPFC connectivity during perception of negative compared to neutral images. Specifically, HC participants demonstrated positive functional coupling between the amygdala and mPFC, consistent with co-active processing of salient information. In contrast, SZ participants evidenced negative functional coupling, consistent with top-down inhibition of the amygdala by the mPFC. A significant positive correlation between connectivity strength during negative image perception and clinician-rated social functioning was observed in SZ participants. Similar patterns of functional coupling were observed during positive image perception, though the between-group difference failed to reach statistical significance. These results suggest that emotional dysfunction in schizophrenia may be due, in part, to abnormal interactions between the amygdala and mPFC during perception of emotional stimuli. Disturbances in functional connectivity during early stages of emotion processing could lead to impairment in higher order aspects of emotion processing, such as emotion regulation

Social Information Processing Skills in Children with Histories of Heavy Prenatal Alcohol Exposure

Based on caregiver report, children with prenatal alcohol exposure have difficulty with social functioning, but little is known about their social cognition. The current study assessed the social information processing patterns of school-age children with heavy prenatal alcohol exposure using a paradigm based on Crick and Dodge’s reformulated six-stage model. Fifty-two children (aged 7–11) with and without heavy prenatal alcohol exposure were tested using a structured interview measure of social information processing involving 18 videotaped vignettes of children in group entry and provocation situations. Alcohol-exposed children displayed maladaptive processing patterns on the goal, response generation, and response evaluation steps in group entry situations, and encoding, attribution, response evaluation, and enactment steps during provocation situations. Children with heavy prenatal alcohol exposure also had difficulty on the Test of Problem Solving, and performance correlated with social information processing measures. Such difficulties may lead to problems in social functioning and warrant early intervention