Impaired Facial Emotion Recognition Research Articles

Deficits in Emotion Recognition as Markers of Frontal Behavioral Dysfunction in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease with prominent motor symptoms. Patients with ALS may also manifest frontal behavior symptoms and cognitive decline, including impairment in facial emotion recognition. The authors aimed to investigate whether deficits in emotion recognition were associated with frontal behavior symptoms in ALS. Participants were patients with probable or definite sporadic ALS (N=21; male:female ratio, 11:10; median age, 62 years; median disease duration, 3 years) and age-matched and education-matched healthy control subjects (N=25; male:female ratio, 14:11; median age, 61 years). The Facial Emotion Recognition Test (FERT) was administered to all participants. Patients with ALS were assessed using the Cambridge Behavior Inventory-Revised and were classified into two groups according to the presence of frontal behavioral symptoms: ALS with no behavioral symptom (ALSns; N=9) and ALS with at least one behavioral symptom (ALSbs; N=12). Apathy and mood symptoms were the most frequent neuropsychiatric symptoms in the patient group. Patients with ALS performed worse than control subjects in the recognition of sadness (p<0.004). There were no differences between control subjects and patients in the ALSns group in all FERT scores, but the ALSbs group had lower performance than control subjects in sadness (p<0.003). Emotion recognition deficit may be a marker of frontal behavior in ALS.

Visual Processing of Emotional Faces is Preserved in Mild Cognitive Impairment.

Research suggests that deficits in emotion recognition are evident in individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), a group 'at risk' of developing dementia. The mechanisms underlying this deficit, however, are unclear. In this study, we sought to determine whether there are alterations in the way in which individuals with MCI visually explore emotional facial stimuli. Eighteen healthy older controls (mean age = 64.6 years) and 32 individuals with MCI were recruited including 18 with the non-amnestic multiple domain (naMCI-md) subtype (mean age = 63.8 years) and 14 with the amnestic multiple domain (aMCI-md) subtype (mean age = 67.9 years). All participants were given a novel eye-tracking paradigm to investigate eye gaze while viewing images of emotional faces on a computer screen. Analyses of eye gaze revealed no significant difference in the percentage of time that groups spent fixating on facial and peripheral facial regions when viewing emotional faces. All participants showed a relative preference for the eye region of faces relative to all other regions. Individuals with aMCI-md were found to be less accurate than controls and naMCI-md on emotion recognition measures. For naMCI-md individuals, significant relationships were found between efficiencies in visual scanning and increased fixation time on the eye region. Visual processing strategies adopted by aMCI-md individuals when exploring emotional faces do not significantly differ from those of healthy controls or naMCI-md individuals. This suggests that impaired facial emotion recognition in aMCI-md is not likely accounted for by visual processing differences, but rather may reflect an eroded ability to extract meaningful cues from the eye region.

Altered Connectivity in Autistic Adults during Complex Facial Emotion Recognition: A Study of EEG Imaginary Coherence.

Difficulties in Facial Emotion Recognition (FER) are commonly associated with individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, the mechanisms underlying these impairments remain inconclusive. While atypical cortical connectivity has been observed in autistic individuals, there is a paucity of investigation during cognitive tasks such as FER. It is possible that atypical cortical connectivity may underlie FER impairments in this population. Electroencephalography (EEG) Imaginary Coherence was examined in 22 autistic adults and 23 typically developing (TD) matched controls during a complex, dynamic FER task. Autistic adults demonstrated reduced coherence between both short and long range inter-hemispheric electrodes. By contrast, short range intra-hemispheric connectivity was increased in frontal and occipital regions during FER. These findings suggest altered network functioning in ASD.

Facial Emotion Recognition and Eye Gaze in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder With and Without Comorbid Conduct Disorder

ObjectiveConduct disorder (CD) is associated with impairments in facial emotion recognition. However, CD commonly co-occurs with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); thus, it is unclear whether these impairments are explained by ADHD or by one of its core features—inattention. We explored whether emotion recognition impairments are specific to individuals with ADHD and comorbid CD while also examining the mechanisms that might explain such deficits.MethodA total of 63 male and female adolescents with ADHD (mean age = 14.2 years, age range = 11–18 years) and with (ADHD+CD) or without (ADHD) comorbid CD, and 41 typically developing controls (healthy controls [HC]; mean age = 15.5, age range = 11–18 years) performed an emotion recognition task with concurrent eye-tracking.ResultsParticipants with ADHD+CD were less accurate at recognizing fear and neutral faces, and more likely to confuse fear with anger than participants with ADHD alone and HC. Both ADHD subgroups fixated the eye region less than HC. Although there was a negative correlation between ADHD symptom severity and eye fixation duration, only CD severity was inversely related to emotion recognition accuracy.ConclusionOnly ADHD participants with comorbid CD showed impairments in emotion recognition, suggesting that these deficits are specific to individuals with conduct problems. However, lack of attention to the eye region of faces appears to be a characteristic of ADHD. These findings suggest that emotion recognition impairments in those with ADHD+CD are related to misinterpretation rather than poor attention, offering interesting opportunities for intervention.

Oxytocin receptor gene variations and socio-emotional effects of MDMA: A pooled analysis of controlled studies in healthy subjects.

Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) increases oxytocin, empathy, and prosociality. Oxytocin plays a critical role in emotion processing and social behavior and has been shown to mediate the prosocial effects of MDMA in animals. Genetic variants, such as single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), of the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) may influence the emotional and social effects of MDMA in humans. The effects of common genetic variants of the OXTR (rs53576, rs1042778, and rs2254298 SNPs) on the emotional, empathogenic, and prosocial effects of MDMA were characterized in up to 132 healthy subjects in a pooled analysis of eight double-blind, placebo-controlled studies. In a subset of 53 subjects, MDMA produced significantly greater feelings of trust in rs1042778 TT genotypes compared with G allele carriers. The rs53576 and rs225498 SNPs did not moderate the subjective effects of MDMA in up to 132 subjects. None of the SNPs moderated MDMA-induced impairments in negative facial emotion recognition or enhancements in emotional empathy in the Multifaceted Empathy Test in 69 subjects. MDMA significantly increased plasma oxytocin concentrations. MDMA and oxytocin concentrations did not differ between OXTR gene variants. The present results provide preliminary evidence that OXTR gene variations may modulate aspects of the prosocial subjective effects of MDMA in humans. However, interpretation should be cautious due to the small sample size. Additionally, OXTR SNPs did not moderate the subjective overall effect of MDMA (any drug effect) or feelings of “closeness to others”.Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov, No: NCT00886886, NCT00990067, NCT01136278, NCT01270672, NCT01386177, NCT01465685, NCT01771874, and NCT01951508.

Diminished facial EMG responses to disgusting scenes and happy and fearful faces in Huntington's disease

Huntington's disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative disorder associated with impaired facial emotion recognition and altered subjective experience of emotion. These impairments likely result from the effects of the disease on underlying neurobiological mechanisms. Studies using self-report to examine emotional experiences have been ambiguous regarding whether experiences are diminished or exaggerated, possibly due to cognitive impairment and lack of insight in HD. To infer affective states more objectively and overcome the limitations of self-report, we used facial EMG to measure muscle responses to emotionally-evocative scenes. Further, we examined muscle responses to emotionally-expressive faces, because facial mimicry is thought to facilitate emotion recognition and social affiliation. Twenty-three HD participants (late pre-manifest and early symptomatic) were compared to twenty-five healthy controls in a scene condition and a face condition. EMG activity was measured from facial muscles associated with expressing particular emotions: 1) corrugator supercilii for anger, 2) frontalis for fear, 3) levator labii for disgust, and 4) both zygomaticus major and orbicularis oculi for happiness. Compared to controls, HD participants showed diminished responses to disgusting scenes, and to happy and fearful faces. Our findings provide evidence for a loss of disgust experience in HD. Further, consistent with the alleged affiliative function of facial mimicry, diminished mimicry responses may be relevant to social-emotional changes in HD. Our findings help understand the neural mechanisms underlying emotion processing impairments in HD.

Alexithymia in Relation to Alcohol Use, Emotion Recognition, and Empathy: The Role of Externally Oriented Thinking

Abstract Both alcohol misuse and the externally oriented thinking (EOT) facet of alexithymia are associated with deficits in facial emotion recognition and emotional empathy. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether EOT mediates the association of drinking with these deficits, and to test the hypothesis that impaired facial emotion recognition mediates the relationship between EOT and low emotional empathy, in a nonclinical sample. The sample consisted of 161 men and women who completed an online survey that included the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), Depression Anxiety Stress Scales, Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), and Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). In addition to replicating associations between TAS-20 and other measures, EOT was found to mediate relationships between potential alcohol misuse (as indexed by AUDIT) and facial emotion recognition (as indexed by RMET) as well as emotional empathy (as indexed by the corresponding subscale of the IRI) after controlling for mood and demographic variables. The negative relationship between EOT and emotional empathy was mediated by impaired facial emotion recognition. Present findings point to a likely role of the EOT trait in the reported associations of alcohol misuse with both poor emotion recognition and low emotional empathy, and a mediating role of poor emotion recognition in the relationship of EOT to the latter.

S77. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS AND FACIAL EMOTION RECOGNITION IMPAIRMENT IN FIRST EPISODE PSYCHOSIS ACROSS EUROPE

BackgroundJumping to conclusions (JTC) is a well-established reasoning and data gathering bias found in patients with psychosis even at illness onset (First Episode Psychosis, FEP). Preliminary work in this field focused primarily on the association with delusions, although jumping to conclusions has also been found in non-deluded schizophrenia patients after remission, and in individual with at risk mental state.Moreover, psychotic patients tend to show impairments in social cognition, struggling in identifying, processing and interpreting social clues. Deficits in facial emotion recognition (FER) – a key component of the construct – represent a well-replicated finding in schizophrenia. Furthermore, deficits in global facial affect recognition have been found in FEP with the same severity as at further stages, especially for anger recognition. The present study aims to measure JTC and FER bias in a sample of FEP recruited across 5 European countries, compared with healthy controls.MethodsData on JTC (Beads task 60:40), FER (Degraded Facial Recognition task – DFAR) and socio-demographics have been analysed in a sample of 643 FEP and 1019 population controls recruited as part as the EU-GEI study across UK, Netherlands, France, Spain, and Italy.IQ scores were used to exclude cases and controls with current IQ<70 (N=171) from JTC analysis and a score <41 (N=384) on the Benton Facial Recognition test for the analysis on DFAR. Logistic regression model was applied to predict case/control status using 1) JTC and 2) DFAR as predictive variables controlling for age, gender and country.ResultsWe showed that the presence of JTC bias varies across different countries both in cases (χ2=23.77 p<0.001) and controls groups (χ2=14.01 p=0.007).Logistic regression analyses revealed JTC to be a significant predictor of case/control status (Adj OR=1.88 CI 95%=1.43–2.29 p<0.001).As well as JTC, FER differed over Europe in both groups (FEP, total: F=17.37, p<0.001; neutral: F=12.4, p<0.001; happy: F=25.62, p<0.001; frightened: F=8.78, p<0.001; angry: F=5.48, p<0.001. Controls, total: F=23.06, p<0.001; neutral: F=21.72, p<0.001; happy: F=21.74, p<0.001; frightened: F=14.14, p<0.001; angry: F=12.49, p<0.001).Logistic regression analyses revealed all DFAR scores, except for happy emotions, to be negatively associated with case/control status (total: B=-.0182 p=0.001; neutral: B=-.054 p=0.003; happy: B=-.0196 p=0.2; frightened: B= -.065 p<0.001; angry: B=-.030 p=0.04).DiscussionThis study supports the evidence that 1) FEP patients are more likely to present JTC and FER impairments than controls; 2) cognition and social cognition might represent transcultural features of psychotic disorders.

Recognition of emotional facial expressions in benzodiazepine dependence and detoxification

ABSTRACTIntroduction: The study investigates how benzodiazepine (BZD) use and detoxification affects empathy and the recognition and intensity rating of emotional facial expressions. The sample comprised 43 participants in three groups: (1) during detoxification (N = 13), (2) after detoxification (N = 15), (3) a matched control group (N = 15). Clinical subjects were recruited from in-patients of an addiction treatment unit.Methods: Empathy levels were tested with the Empathy Quotient (EQ-Short). Recognition accuracy and emotion intensity rating were based on a computerised task displaying static and dynamic facial expressions of joy, anger, sadness, and fear.Results: The controls proved more accurate than both experimental groups in identifying facial expressions of negative emotions. Joy recognition proved most accurate overall. Among the clinical subjects, women in particular exhibited an impaired ability to correctly identify negative emotions from facial expressions. Dynamic stimuli were better recognised than static ones albeit only in the experimental groups. No significant differences were found for emotion intensity ratings and EQ scores.Conclusion: Our findings suggest that the impaired facial emotion recognition accuracy is not caused by deficits in empathy. No improvement was recorded post-detoxification which may indicate impaired interpersonal functioning among BZD users. Further research is warranted in light of this study’s limitations.

Feasibility of Automated Training for Facial Emotion Expression and Recognition in Autism

Impairment in facial emotion recognition (FER) and facial emotion expression (FEE), often documented in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), are believed to contribute to the observed core social-communication disability that characterizes this disorder. Moreover, impaired FER and FEE are frequently seen in other disorders and problem behaviors. We describe the development of a novel system to detect and give real-time feedback on these processes, termed facial emotion expression training (FEET), an automated, gamelike system that is based on 3-dimensional sensing (Kinect) technology. A sample of 40 children (n = 20 ASD, n = 20 typically developing) interacted with our prototype system, which presented audiovisual stimuli and assessed responses of participants. Overall, consumer satisfaction ratings were high, and youth with ASD reported enjoying interacting with the system more than did the typical youth. Results suggest that new technology-based interventions are acceptable to consumers and viable for use in remediation of transdiagnostic processes, such as FER and FEE. Implications for future technology-based intervention to target transdiagnostic processes are discussed.

Cultural differences in perceiving and processing emotions: a holistic approach to person perception

East Asians tend towards holistic styles of thinking whereas Westerners generally think more analytically. Recent work has shown that Western participants perceive emotional expressions in a somewhat holistic manner, however. Specifically, Westerners interpret emotional facial expressions differently when presented with a body displaying a congruent versus incongruent emotional expression. Here, we examined how processing these face-body combinations varies according to cultural differences in thinking style. Consistent with their proclivity towards contextual focus, Japanese perceivers focused more on the body when judging the emotions of face-body composites. Moreover, in line with their greater tendency towards holistic perceptual processing, we found that pairing facial expressions of emotion with emotionally congruent bodies facilitated Japanese participants’ recognition of faces’ emotions to a greater degree than it did for Canadians. Similarly, incongruent face-body combinations impaired facial emotion recognition more for Japanese than Canadian participants. These findings extend work on cultural differences in emotion recognition from interpersonal to intrapersonal contexts with implications for intercultural understanding.

Recognition of emotional facial expressions in adolescents with anorexia nervosa and adolescents with major depression

Anorexia nervosa (AN) has been suggested to be associated with abnormalities in facial emotion recognition. Most prior studies on facial emotion recognition in AN have investigated adult samples, despite the onset of AN being particularly often during adolescence. In addition, few studies have examined whether impairments in facial emotion recognition are specific to AN or might be explained by frequent comorbid conditions that are also associated with deficits in emotion recognition, such as depression. The present study addressed these gaps by investigating recognition of emotional facial expressions in adolescent girls with AN (n = 26) compared to girls with major depression (MD; n = 26) and healthy girls (HC; n = 37). Participants completed one task requiring identification of emotions (happy, sad, afraid, angry, neutral) in faces and two control tasks. Neither of the clinical groups showed impairments. The AN group was more accurate than the HC group in recognising afraid facial expressions and more accurate than the MD group in recognising happy, sad, and afraid expressions. Misclassification analyses identified subtle group differences in the types of errors made. The results suggest that the deficits in facial emotion recognition found in adult AN samples are not present in adolescent patients.

Facial emotion recognition and eye movement behaviour in conduct disorder.

Conduct Disorder (CD) is associated with impairments in facial emotion recognition. However, it is unclear whether such deficits are explained by a failure to attend to emotionally informative face regions, such as the eyes, or by problems in the appraisal of emotional cues. Male and female adolescents with CD and varying levels of callous-unemotional (CU) traits and age- and sex-matched typically developing (TD) controls (aged 13-18) categorised the emotion of dynamic and morphed static faces. Concurrent eye tracking was used to relate categorisation performance to participants' allocation of overt attention. Adolescents with CD were worse at emotion recognition than TD controls, with deficits observed across static and dynamic expressions. In addition, the CD group fixated less on the eyes when viewing fearful and sad expressions. Across all participants, higher levels of CU traits were associated with fear recognition deficits and reduced attention to the eyes of surprised faces. Within the CD group, however, higher CU traits were associated with better fear recognition. Overall, males were worse at recognising emotions than females and displayed a reduced tendency to fixate the eyes. Adolescents with CD, and particularly males, showed deficits in emotion recognition and fixated less on the eyes when viewing emotional faces. Individual differences in fixation behaviour predicted modest variations in emotion categorisation. However, group differences in fixation were small and did not explain the much larger group differences in categorisation performance, suggesting that CD-related deficits in emotion recognition were not mediated by abnormal fixation patterns.

Electromyographic activity of the quadriceps muscles in patients with stiff-knee gait (SKG) after stroke

Schizophrenia patients have impaired performance and abnormal brain activation during facial emotion recognition, which may represent a marker of genetic liability to schizophrenia. However, it remains unclear whether the impairment is specific to recognizing emotion from faces or is instead attributable to more generalized dysfunction. The current study aimed to distinguish between specific and generalized neural dysfunction underlying impaired facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia and examine associations with genetic liability. Twenty-eight schizophrenia patients, 27 nonpsychotic first-degree relatives, and 27 community controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while making judgments about either the emotion or age of emotional faces. Patients had performance deficits during the emotion and age discrimination conditions compared to relatives and controls, while relatives had intact performance. Patients had hypoactivation compared to controls across conditions, mainly in medial prefrontal cortex. Unlike controls, patients demonstrated a failure to recruit the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, a region involved in social cognition and decision-making, and relatives had a pattern of recruitment intermediate between patients and controls. Compared to controls, relatives had greater deactivation of regions associated with the default mode network, and patients had similar findings during age discrimination. The common patterns of performance deficits and activation abnormalities during emotion and age discrimination in schizophrenia suggest that generalized cognitive impairment, notably in social cognition and decision-making, contributes to impaired facial emotion recognition. Similar functional activation patterns in relatives, despite intact performance, suggest that brain activation may represent a more sensitive marker of genetic liability than behaviour. Hyperdeactivation of default mode network regions in relatives may represent cognitive inefficiency, or compensatory mechanisms that help maintain intact performance.

Multimodal Emotion Recognition Is Resilient to Insufficient Sleep: Results From Cross-Sectional and Experimental Studies.

Insufficient sleep has been associated with impaired recognition of facial emotions. However, previous studies have found inconsistent results, potentially stemming from the type of static picture task used. We therefore examined whether insufficient sleep was associated with decreased emotion recognition ability in two separate studies using a dynamic multimodal task. Study 1 used a cross-sectional design consisting of 291 participants with questionnaire measures assessing sleep duration and self-reported sleep quality for the previous night. Study 2 used an experimental design involving 181 participants where individuals were quasi-randomized into either a sleep-deprivation (N = 90) or a sleep-control (N = 91) condition. All participants from both studies were tested on the same forced-choice multimodal test of emotion recognition to assess the accuracy of emotion categorization. Sleep duration, self-reported sleep quality (study 1), and sleep deprivation (study 2) did not predict overall emotion recognition accuracy or speed. Similarly, the responses to each of the twelve emotions tested showed no evidence of impaired recognition ability, apart from one positive association suggesting that greater self-reported sleep quality could predict more accurate recognition of disgust (study 1). The studies presented here involve considerably larger samples than previous studies and the results support the null hypotheses. Therefore, we suggest that the ability to accurately categorize the emotions of others is not associated with short-term sleep duration or sleep quality and is resilient to acute periods of insufficient sleep.

Consequences of brain tumour resection on emotion recognition.

Emotion processing impairments are common in patients undergoing brain surgery for fronto-temporal tumour resection, with potential consequences on social interactions. However, evidence is controversial concerning side and site of lesions causing such deficits. This study investigates visual and auditory emotion recognition in brain tumour patients with the aim of clarifying which lesion sites are related to impairments in emotion processing from different modalities. Thirty-four patients were evaluated, before and after surgery, on facial expression and emotional prosody recognition; voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) analyses were performed on patients' post-surgery MRI images. Results showed that patients' performance decreased after surgery in both visual and auditory modalities, but, in general, recovered 3months after surgery. In facial expression recognition, left brain-damaged patients showed greater post-surgery deterioration than right brain-damaged ones, whose performance specifically decreased for sadness and fear. VLSM analysis revealed two segregated areas in the left hemisphere accounting for post-surgery scores for happy (fronto-temporo-insular region) and surprised (middle frontal gyrus and inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus) facial expressions. Our findings demonstrate that surgical removal of tumours in the fronto-temporal region produces impairment in facial emotion recognition with an overall recovery at 3months, suggesting a partially different representation of positive and negative emotions in the left and right hemispheres for visually - but not auditory - presented emotions; moreover, we show that deficits in specific expression recognition are associated with discrete lesion locations.

Facial emotion recognition in Parkinson’s disease: Association with age and olfaction

ABSTRACTObjective: The ability to recognize facial emotion expressions has been reported to be impaired in Parkinson’s disease (PD), yet previous studies showed inconsistent findings. The aim of this study was to further investigate facial emotion recognition (FER) in PD patients and its association with demographic and clinical parameters (including motor and nonmotor symptoms). Method: Thirty-four nondemented PD patients and 24 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HC) underwent clinical neurological and neuropsychological assessment, standardized olfactory testing with Sniffin’ Sticks, and the Ekman 60 Faces Emotion Recognition Test. Results: PD patients had a significantly lower score on the total FER task than HC (p = .006), even after controlling for the potential confounding factors depression and apathy. The PD group had a specific impairment in the recognition of surprise (p = .007). The recognition of anger approached statistical significance (p = .07). Increasing chronological age and age at disease onset were associated with worse performance on the FER task in PD patients. Olfactory function along with PD diagnosis predicted worse FER performance within all study participants. Conclusion: Facial emotion recognition and especially the recognition of surprise are significantly impaired in PD patients compared with age- and sex-matched HC. The association of FER with age and olfactory function is endorsed by common structures that undergo neurodegeneration in PD. The relevance of FER in social interaction stresses the clinical relevance and the need for further investigation in this field. Future studies should also determine whether impaired FER is already present in premotor stages of PD.

Facial emotion recognition in patients with focal and diffuse axonal injury

ABSTRACTObjective: Facial emotion recognition impairment has been well documented in patients with traumatic brain injury. Studies exploring the neural substrates involved in such deficits have implicated specific grey matter structures (e.g. orbitofrontal regions), as well as diffuse white matter damage. Our study aims to clarify whether different types of injuries (i.e. focal vs. diffuse) will lead to different types of impairments on facial emotion recognition tasks, as no study has directly compared these patients.Methods: The present study examined performance and response patterns on a facial emotion recognition task in 14 participants with diffuse axonal injury (DAI), 14 with focal injury (FI) and 22 healthy controls.Results: We found that, overall, participants with FI and DAI performed more poorly than controls on the facial emotion recognition task. Further, we observed comparable emotion recognition performance in participants with FI and DAI, despite differences in the nature and distribution of their lesions. However, the rating response pattern between the patient groups was different.Conclusion: This is the first study to show that pure DAI, without gross focal lesions, can independently lead to facial emotion recognition deficits and that rating patterns differ depending on the type and location of trauma.

Similar patterns of brain activation abnormalities during emotional and non-emotional judgments of faces in a schizophrenia family study

Schizophrenia patients have impaired performance and abnormal brain activation during facial emotion recognition, which may represent a marker of genetic liability to schizophrenia. However, it remains unclear whether the impairment is specific to recognizing emotion from faces or is instead attributable to more generalized dysfunction. The current study aimed to distinguish between specific and generalized neural dysfunction underlying impaired facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia and examine associations with genetic liability. Twenty-eight schizophrenia patients, 27 nonpsychotic first-degree relatives, and 27 community controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while making judgments about either the emotion or age of emotional faces. Patients had performance deficits during the emotion and age discrimination conditions compared to relatives and controls, while relatives had intact performance. Patients had hypoactivation compared to controls across conditions, mainly in medial prefrontal cortex. Unlike controls, patients demonstrated a failure to recruit the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, a region involved in social cognition and decision-making, and relatives had a pattern of recruitment intermediate between patients and controls. Compared to controls, relatives had greater deactivation of regions associated with the default mode network, and patients had similar findings during age discrimination. The common patterns of performance deficits and activation abnormalities during emotion and age discrimination in schizophrenia suggest that generalized cognitive impairment, notably in social cognition and decision-making, contributes to impaired facial emotion recognition. Similar functional activation patterns in relatives, despite intact performance, suggest that brain activation may represent a more sensitive marker of genetic liability than behaviour. Hyperdeactivation of default mode network regions in relatives may represent cognitive inefficiency, or compensatory mechanisms that help maintain intact performance.

A role of interactions between N-methyl-D-aspartate and dopamine receptors in facial emotion recognition impairment in schizophrenia

To search for genetic mechanisms of facial emotion recognition (FER) impairment, one of the features of schizophrenia that affects social adaptation of patients. Based on the view implicating the interplay between dopaminergic and glutamatergic systems into the pathogenesis of schizophrenia, authors explored the interaction effects of the C366G polymorphism in the GRIN2B gene encoding NMDA receptor subunit NR2B with ANKK1/DRD2 Taq1A and 48-VNTR DRD4 polymorphisms on FER. GRIN2B -DRD2 interaction effects were studied in a sample of 237 patients and 235 healthy controls, GRIN2B - DRD4 in 268 patients and 208 controls. Both effects were significant in combined samples of patients and controls (GRIN2B X DRD2, F=4.12, p=0.043; GRIN2B X DRD4, F=6.43, p=0.012). Further analysis confirmed the interaction effect of GRIN2B and DRD2 polymorphisms on FER in patients with schizophrenia. In patients with a less efficient allele of the DRD2 in the absence of the minor allele of the GRIN2B C366G polymorphism, the results were close to normal values while patients with minor alleles of both polymorphisms showed the worst results. This finding is in line with the conceptions on a possible role of NMDA-receptor hypofunction and D2-mediated regulation of NMDA-receptor activity in FER impairments in schizophrenia.