Abstract
Patients with schizophrenia consistently exhibit abnormalities in the N170 event-related potential (ERP) component evoked by images of faces. However, the relationship between these face-specific N170 abnormalities in patients with schizophrenia and the clinical characteristics of this disorder has not been elucidated. Here, ERP recordings were conducted for patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls. The amplitude and latency of the N170 component were recorded while participants passively viewed face and non-face (table) images to explore the correlation between face-specific processing and clinical characteristics in schizophrenia. The results provided evidence for a face-specific N170 latency delay in patients with schizophrenia. The N170 latency in patients with schizophrenia was significantly longer than that in healthy controls when images of faces were presented in both upright and inverted orientations. Importantly, the face-related N170 latencies of the left temporo-occipital electrodes (P7 and PO7) were positively correlated with both negative and general psychiatric symptoms in these patients. The N170 amplitudes were weaker in patients than in controls for inverted images of both faces and non-faces (tables), with a left-hemisphere dominance. The face inversion effect (FIE), meaning the difference in N170 amplitude between upright and inverted faces, was absent in patients with schizophrenia, suggesting an abnormality of holistic face processing. Together, these results revealed a marked symptom-relevant neural delay associated with face-specific processing in patients with schizophrenia, providing additional evidence to support the demyelination hypothesis of schizophrenia.
Highlights
Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder that is marked by positive symptoms, negative symptoms, cognitive deficits, motor abnormalities and social dysfunction
The negativity that peaks at around 170 ms (N170) amplitude in patients was significantly smaller than that in controls for both inverted faces (P7: t[46] = 2.432, p = 0.019; PO7: t[46] = 2.223, p = 0.031) and inverted tables (P7: t[46] = 2.159, p = 0.036; PO7: t[46] = 2.025, p = 0.049) in the left hemisphere, while a significant difference in the right hemisphere was found only for inverted tables at P8 (t[46] = 2.100, p = 0.041; all other comparisons p > 0.05 for P8 and PO8). These results indicated that inverted face-evoked N170 amplitudes were reduced in patients with schizophrenia
The results showed that N170 latencies were correlated with negative symptom and general psychiatric symptom scores, with no significant correlation found between N170 latencies and positive symptom scores
Summary
Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder that is marked by positive symptoms, negative symptoms, cognitive deficits, motor abnormalities and social dysfunction (for example see Onitsuka et al, 2013). Face-specific N170 potentials are significantly reduced in people with schizophrenia (Herrmann et al, 2004; Onitsuka et al, 2006; Tsunoda et al, 2012; Maher et al, 2016), suggesting that they have basic perceptual deficits in face processing. Previous studies have shown that the behavioral FIE is reduced or even absent in people with schizophrenia (Shin et al, 2008; Kim et al, 2010; Bauser et al, 2012; Megreya, 2016), suggesting a configural processing dysfunction. Many studies have investigated the behavioral FIE deficit in people with schizophrenia, the FIE of the N170 in those with schizophrenia and its correlation with schizophrenia symptoms are unexplored
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