Abstract
BackgroundPatients with schizophrenia often experience problems regulating their emotions. Non-affected relatives show similar difficulties, although to a lesser extent, and the neural basis of such difficulties remains to be elucidated. In the current paper we investigated whether schizophrenia patients, non-affected siblings and healthy controls (HC) exhibit differences in brain activation during emotion regulation.MethodsAll subjects (n = 20 per group) performed an emotion regulation task while they were in an fMRI scanner. The task contained two experimental conditions for the down-regulation of emotions (reappraise and suppress), in which IAPS pictures were used to generate a negative affect. We also assessed whether the groups differed in emotion regulation strategies used in daily life by means of the emotion regulation questionnaire (ERQ).ResultsThough the overall negative affect was higher for patients as well as for siblings compared to HC for all conditions, all groups reported decreased negative affect after both regulation conditions. Nonetheless, neuroimaging results showed hypoactivation relative to HC in VLPFC, insula, middle temporal gyrus, caudate and thalamus for patients when reappraising negative pictures. In siblings, the same pattern was evident as in patients, but only in cortical areas.ConclusionsGiven that all groups performed similarly on the emotion regulation task, but differed in overall negative affect ratings and brain activation, our findings suggest reduced levels of emotion regulation processing in neural circuits in patients with schizophrenia. Notably, this also holds for siblings, albeit to a lesser extent, indicating that it may be part and parcel of a vulnerability for psychosis.
Highlights
Schizophrenia is a severe and complex disorder, characterized by delusions and hallucinations, and by abnormalities in the processing of emotions [1,2]
emotion regulation questionnaire (ERQ) scores and ratings for the emotion regulation task are presented in table 2
This study is the first to investigate the neural basis of emotion regulation in schizophrenia patients and siblings
Summary
Schizophrenia is a severe and complex disorder, characterized by delusions and hallucinations, and by abnormalities in the processing of emotions [1,2]. Studies in patients with schizophrenia [1,2,6,7] and their non-affected siblings [8] suggest a hampered ability to regulate emotions, which is reflected in the neural circuits of patients and relatives [1,2,9]. Antecedent-focused strategies modulate the emotion generation process in an early stage, before the actual response has taken place. Suppression refers to the inhibition of emotion-expressive behavior This results in little or no change in emotional experience and increased sympathetic activation of the cardiovascular system [10]. In the current paper we investigated whether schizophrenia patients, non-affected siblings and healthy controls (HC) exhibit differences in brain activation during emotion regulation
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