Abstract
Impaired attentional processing of negative facial expressions is prominent in schizophrenia and has been shown to be associated with patients’ social dysfunctions. However, little is known about when and which specific attention deficits influence social functions. Given the dynamic feature of attention, it is necessary to investigate the attention deficits in negative emotional processing unfolding in time. The current study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the temporal dynamics of attention deficits in emotion perception and their potential relationship with emotional/social impairments in neuroleptic naive schizophrenic patients. Two specific attention deficits were identified and were found to be associated with emotional/social impairments. More specifically, the deficit in orienting attention (evidenced with the reduced P1 amplitude) was correlated with expressive deficits, while the deficit in executive control of attention (evidenced with the reduced P3 amplitude) was correlated with avolition/asociality. Together, these findings may provide novel insights into the core pathophysiological processes and offer objective biomarkers for specific emotional/social impairments in schizophrenia. It is also hoped that this study helps to bridge the gap between basic cognitive deficits and relative high-level social dysfunctions in schizophrenic patients.
Highlights
Skills[7,8]
The degree of social dysfunction in schizophrenia is closely associated with the severity of negative symptoms[9,10,11], especially those characterized by diminished expression and amotivation[12,13]
While deficits in orienting attention were correlated with the first factor of negative symptoms in patients, deficits in executive control of attention were associated with the second factor of negative symptoms
Summary
Skills[7,8]. The degree of social dysfunction in schizophrenia is closely associated with the severity of negative symptoms[9,10,11], especially those characterized by diminished expression and amotivation (i.e. avolition)[12,13]. Little is known about whether attention deficits are associated with social dysfunction and relevant negative symptoms in schizophrenic patients. One previous ANT study with a large sample size of schizophrenic patients has found a highly profound deficit in the executive network, a smaller but significant deficit in the orienting network and no deficit in the alerting network[19]. Evidences in cognitive psychology have shown that orientating and executive control of attention are involved, to a large extent, sequentially in time for negative emotional processing[21,22,23]. Given the acknowledged emotion deficits in patients with schizophrenia[28,29], it is expected that the above mentioned ERP findings of orienting/executive function would be further deteriorated when patients process negative emotional stimuli
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