The relationship between facial emotion recognition and executive functions in first-episode patients with schizophrenia and their siblings.

Chengqing Yang,Leiying He,Zezhi Li,Zheng Lu,Yingying Tang,Hui Li,Tianhong Zhang,Nan Huang,Fei Liu,Jijun Wang,Jie Zhang,Anisha Heeramun-Aubeeluck,Fazhan Chen,Na Liu

doi:10.1186/s12888-015-0618-3

Abstract

BackgroundAlthough many studies have examined executive functions and facial emotion recognition in people with schizophrenia, few of them focused on the correlation between them. Furthermore, their relationship in the siblings of patients also remains unclear. The aim of the present study is to examine the correlation between executive functions and facial emotion recognition in patients with first-episode schizophrenia and their siblings.MethodsThirty patients with first-episode schizophrenia, their twenty-six siblings, and thirty healthy controls were enrolled. They completed facial emotion recognition tasks using the Ekman Standard Faces Database, and executive functioning was measured by Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). Hierarchical regression analysis was applied to assess the correlation between executive functions and facial emotion recognition.ResultsOur study found that in siblings, the accuracy in recognizing low degree ‘disgust’ emotion was negatively correlated with the total correct rate in WCST (r = −0.614, p = 0.023), but was positively correlated with the total error in WCST (r = 0.623, p = 0.020); the accuracy in recognizing ‘neutral’ emotion was positively correlated with the total error rate in WCST (r = 0.683, p = 0.014) while negatively correlated with the total correct rate in WCST (r = −0.677, p = 0.017). People with schizophrenia showed an impairment in facial emotion recognition when identifying moderate ‘happy’ facial emotion, the accuracy of which was significantly correlated with the number of completed categories of WCST (R2 = 0.432, P < .05). There were no correlations between executive functions and facial emotion recognition in the healthy control group.ConclusionsOur study demonstrated that facial emotion recognition impairment correlated with executive function impairment in people with schizophrenia and their unaffected siblings but not in healthy controls.

Highlights

Many studies have examined executive functions and facial emotion recognition in people with schizophrenia, few of them focused on the correlation between them
Participants In the period extending from May 2008 to May 2012, we investigated patients with first-episode schizophrenia who were hospitalized in the Early Assessment Service for Young People with Psychosis (EASY), Shanghai Mental Health Center
While identifying specific expressions of emotion, the accuracy was affected by group (F(2, 83) = 6.781, p = .002), emotion (F(2, 83) = 20.363, p < .001), intensity (F(2, 83) = 20.288, Table 1 Demographic and clinical information for schizophrenia, healthy controls and genetic-risk group (x Æ s)

Summary

Introduction

Many studies have examined executive functions and facial emotion recognition in people with schizophrenia, few of them focused on the correlation between them. Their relationship in the siblings of patients remains unclear. The aim of the present study is to examine the correlation between executive functions and facial emotion recognition in patients with first-episode schizophrenia and their siblings. Compared to negative emotions such as anger and sadness, people with schizophrenia are more accurate in identifying positive emotions such as happiness [2,3,4,5,6]. In people with schizophrenia, such emotion-specific deficit is caused by aberrant neuronal processing in brain regions that modulate negative emotion recognition [7, 8]

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