Neural changes following a body-oriented resilience therapy with elements of kickboxing for individuals with a psychotic disorder: a randomized controlled trial

Elisabeth C D Van Der Stouwe,Bertine De Vries,André Aleman,Jooske T Van Busschbach,Gerdina H M Pijnenborg,Esther M Opmeer,Jan-Bernard C Marsman

doi:10.1007/s00406-020-01097-z

Abstract

Individuals with a psychotic disorder are at an increased risk of becoming the victim of a crime. A body-oriented resilience therapy (BEATVIC) aimed at preventing victimization by addressing putatively underlying factors was developed. One of these factors is social cognition, particularly facial affect processing. The current study investigated neural effects of BEATVIC on facial affect processing using two face processing tasks. Participants were randomized to either BEATVIC or a ‘Befriending’ control group. Twenty-seven patients completed an Emotional Faces task and the Wall of Faces task during fMRI, pre- and post-intervention. General linear model analyses yielded no differences between groups over time. Independent component analyses revealed increased activation of the salience network to angry and fearful faces in BEATVIC compared to Befriending. Increased activation of the salience network may suggest an increased alertness for potentially dangerous faces.

Highlights

Individuals diagnosed with a psychotic spectrum disorder are more susceptible to become the victim of a crime than people from the general population [1, 2]
The BEATVIC group showed increased activation of the salience network compared to the Befriending group during processing of fearful and angry faces
No differences were found between the BEATVIC group and the Befriending group over time in terms of regional brain activation as analyzed with conventional GLM analysis

Summary

Introduction

Individuals diagnosed with a psychotic spectrum disorder are more susceptible to become the victim of a crime than people from the general population [1, 2]. BEATVIC aims to prevent victimization by addressing associated factors which are modifiable and feasible to improve by means of an intervention One of these risk factors is impaired social cognitive deficits [6], such as problems in processing facial expressions that often accompany psychotic disorders [6, 7]. Individuals with a psychotic disorder often show a deficiency in recognizing facial expressions, body language, mentalization and prosody which could prevent accurate judgement of threatening social situations which may result in victimization. These deficits in social cognitive functioning have been acknowledged as an important treatment target to

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