Faces In Schizophrenia Research Articles

Visual exploration of emotional faces in schizophrenia using masks from the Japanese Noh theatre

Studying eye movements during visual exploration is widely used to investigate visual information processing in schizophrenia. Here, we used masks from the Japanese Noh theatre to study visual exploration behavior during an emotional face recognition task and a brightness evaluation control task using the same stimuli. Eye movements were recorded in 25 patients with schizophrenia and 25 age-matched healthy controls while participants explored seven photos of Japanese Noh masks tilted to seven different angles. Additionally, participants were assessed on seven upright binary black and white pictures of these Noh masks (Mooney-like pictures), seven Upside-down pictures (180° upside-down turned Mooneys), and seven Neutral pictures. Participants either had to indicate whether they had recognized a face and its emotional expression, or they had to evaluate the brightness of the picture (total N = 56 trials). We observed a clear effect of inclination angle of Noh masks on emotional ratings (p < 0.001) and visual exploration behavior in both groups. Controls made larger saccades than patients when not being able to recognize a face in upside-down Mooney pictures (p < 0.01). Patients also made smaller saccades when exploring pictures for brightness (p < 0.05). Exploration behavior in patients was related to depressive symptom expression during emotional face recognition but not during brightness evaluation. Our findings suggest that visual exploration behavior in patients with schizophrenia is less flexible than in controls depending on the specific task requirements, specifically when exploring physical aspects of the environment.

Association between the Thalamus and Social Function in Schizophrenia

Patients with schizophrenia face several difficulties in their daily social life owing to the impairment of social cognitive ability. However, the neural basis of this impairment has not been fully clarified. We attempted to identify the neuronal basis of social dysfunction of schizophrenia by focusing on the thalamus, which is a subcortical structure. We have shown that right thalamic volume, as well as white matter integrity between the right thalamus and right frontal lobe, is associated with the social function of patients with schizophrenia, by using T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data. These findings suggested that neural network abnormalities between the thalamus and the frontal lobe can be related to social dysfunction in patients with schizophrenia. Thus, these findings may contribute to the development of new treatments for schizophrenia.

Morbidity burden and community-based palliative care are associated with rates of hospital use by people with schizophrenia in the last year of life: A population-based matched cohort study.

ObjectivePeople with schizophrenia face an increased risk of premature death from chronic diseases and injury. This study describes the trajectory of acute care health service use in the last year of life for people with schizophrenia and how this varied with receipt of community-based specialist palliative care and morbidity burden.MethodA population-based retrospective matched cohort study of people who died from 01/01/2009 to 31/12/2013 with and without schizophrenia in Western Australia. Hospital inpatient, emergency department, death and community-based care data collections were linked at the person level. Rates of emergency department presentations and hospital admissions over the last year of life were estimated.ResultsOf the 63508 decedents, 1196 (1.9%) had a lifetime history of schizophrenia. After adjusting for confounders and averaging over the last year of life there was no difference in the overall rate of ED presentation between decedents with schizophrenia and the matched cohort (HR 1.09; 95%CI 0.99–1.19). However, amongst the subset of decedents with cancer, choking or intentional self-harm recorded on their death certificate, those with schizophrenia presented to ED more often. Males with schizophrenia had the highest rates of emergency department use in the last year of life. Rates of hospital admission for decedents with schizophrenia were on average half (HR 0.53, 95%CI 0.44–0.65) that of the matched cohort although this varied by cause of death. Of all decedents with cancer, 27.5% of people with schizophrenia accessed community-based specialist palliative care compared to 40.4% of the matched cohort (p<0.001). Rates of hospital admissions for decedents with schizophrenia increased 50% (95% CI: 10%-110%) when enrolled in specialist palliative care.ConclusionIn the last year of life, people with schizophrenia were less likely to be admitted to hospital and access community-based speciality palliative care, but more likely to attend emergency departments if male. Community-based specialist palliative care was associated with increased rates of hospital admissions.

Positive and negative impacts of schizophrenia on family caregivers: a systematic review and qualitative meta-summary.

Schizophrenia places a heavy burden on the individual with the disorder, as well as on his or her family; this burden continues over the long course of the disease. This study aimed to provide an overview of the positive and negative impacts of schizophrenia on family caregivers. From April to June 2017, two investigators conducted a systematic review and meta-summary of studies obtained from five electronic databases and the footnotes and citations of eligible studies. Qualitative studies that explored the experiences of family caregivers of individuals with schizophrenia were included. Study findings published between 1993 and 2017 were extracted and synthesised using narrative and summative approaches. After the removal of duplicates, independent reviewers screened 864 records. Subsequently, 46 full-text articles were assessed for eligibility and 23 papers were included in the synthesis. Negative impacts identified were traumatic experiences, loss of expectation of life and health, lack of personal and social resources, uncertainty and unpredictability, family disruption, conflict in interpersonal relationships, difficulty in understanding, and stigma and heredity. Meanwhile, the positive impacts identified were family solidarity, admiration, affirmation, affection, compassion, learning knowledge and skills, self-confidence, personal growth, and appreciation. Analysis of the studies suggested that family members of individuals with schizophrenia face a series of traumatic situations during the course of the illness. Their subsequent experiences can be conceptualised as a continuous circle of caregiving, in which the positive impacts can be centrally positioned within the negative impacts.

Holistic Management of Schizophrenia Symptoms Using Pharmacological and Non-pharmacological Treatment.

Individuals with schizophrenia lead a poor quality of life, due to poor medical attention, homelessness, unemployment, financial constraints, lack of education, and poor social skills. Thus, a review of factors associated with the holistic management of schizophrenia is of paramount importance. The objective of this review is to improve the quality of life of individuals with schizophrenia, by addressing the factors related to the needs of the patients and present them in a unified manner. Although medications play a role, other factors that lead to a successful holistic management of schizophrenia include addressing the following: financial management, independent community living, independent living skill, relationship, friendship, entertainment, regular exercise for weight gained due to medication administration, co-morbid health issues, and day-care programmes for independent living. This review discusses the relationship between different symptoms and problems individuals with schizophrenia face (e.g., homelessness and unemployment), and how these can be managed using pharmacological and non-pharmacological methods. Thus, the target of this review is the carers of individuals with schizophrenia, public health managers, counselors, case workers, psychiatrists, and clinical psychologists aiming to enhance the quality of life of individuals with schizophrenia.

The dysfunction of processing emotional faces in schizophrenia revealed by expression-related visual mismatch negativity.

To investigate the emotional face processing in patients with schizophrenia, the preattentive automatic processing of emotional faces in individuals with schizophrenia was compared with that of age-matched healthy control group as indexed by the expressional mismatch negativity (EMMN) elicited by facial expressions. Compared with neutral faces as standard stimuli, deviant emotional faces elicited posterior EMMN between 150 and 500 ms after stimuli onset, with larger amplitudes for sad than happy deviant faces. Both early and late EMMNs significantly decreased in the schizophrenia group, regardless of sad or happy EMMN, in comparison with the healthy control group. These data suggest the dysfunction of automatic processing of expressional information in patients with schizophrenia.

Investigating the social costs of schizophrenia: Facial expressions in dyadic interactions of people with and without schizophrenia.

People with schizophrenia show marked reductions in their emotional expressiveness, generally known as blunted affect. In this study, we tested whether interaction partners would evaluate community-dwelling participants with schizophrenia less favorably than healthy controls and whether this difference would be explained by reduced smiling behavior related to schizophrenia. We also tested whether deficient affect recognition would predict reduced smiling. We created 3 study groups, consisting of 28 participants each, participants with schizophrenia (SZ), healthy controls (HC), and naive healthy interaction partners (IP). IP engaged in 2 separate same-sex dyadic interactions with matched members of each of the other 2 groups, SZ and HC, in a repeated-measures study design. During the interactions, we assessed the amount of smiling and mimicry of smiling via electromyography. After the interactions, IP rated their willingness for future interactions with SZ and HC, respectively. IP indicated less willingness for future interactions with SZ than with HC participants (d = -0.72) but SZ and HC did not differ with respect to smiling or affect recognition. Better affect recognition predicted more smiling; more smiling predicted more favorable social evaluations. Within SZ participants, disorganization symptoms but no other symptom dimensions were associated with the social evaluations. In conclusion, community-dwelling people with schizophrenia face social challenges that go beyond the adverse effects of stigmatization. Future work needs to clarify the role of different symptom dimensions and behavioral aspects contributing to the interpersonal costs of schizophrenia to derive interventions targeted at social reintegration. (PsycINFO Database Record

Family Burden and Coping among Caregivers of Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a strict mental disorder affecting about human population. Being chronic and often incapacitating, it extracts tremendous cost from patients, caregivers and society. Caregivers of patients with schizophrenia face stress and emotional hardship and are frequently forced to assume lifelong care-taking roles. Subjective burden refers to the caregivers’ short term and long term reactions to the patient’s symptoms and behaviors, and the care giving task resulting from it. Perceived distress and interpersonal strain are examples. It refers to the extent to which the care giver feels he or she is burdened. This study aims to conducted for analysis the burden and coping among caregivers of schizophrenia. This study conducted with 30 Schizophrenic patients and 30 primary caretakers of the patients, totally 60 samples were studied. The result shows that there is association between burden assessment schedules of caregiver with that of caregivers coping scale. It revealed statistical significance. Low coping score seen in caregiver who had high burden score. Lower burden score seen in caregivers who had high coping level.

Mirror self-face perception in individuals with schizophrenia: Feelings of strangeness associated with one's own image

Self-face recognition is crucial for sense of identity and for maintaining a coherent sense of self. Most of our daily life experiences with the image of our own face happen when we look at ourselves in the mirror. However, to date, mirror self-perception in schizophrenia has received little attention despite evidence that face recognition deficits and self abnormalities have been described in schizophrenia. Thus, this study aims to investigate mirror self-face perception in schizophrenia patients and its correlation with clinical symptoms. Twenty-four schizophrenia patients and twenty-five healthy controls were explicitly requested to describe their image in detail during 2min whilst looking at themselves in a mirror. Then, they were asked to report whether they experienced any self-face recognition difficulties. Results showed that schizophrenia patients reported more feelings of strangeness towards their face compared to healthy controls (U=209.5, p=0.048, r=0.28), but no statistically significant differences were found regarding misidentification (p=0.111) and failures in recognition (p=0.081). Symptoms such as hallucinations, somatic concerns and depression were also associated with self-face perception abnormalities (all p-values>0.05). Feelings of strangeness toward one's own face in schizophrenia might be part of a familiar face perception deficit or a more global self-disturbance, which is characterized by a loss of self-other boundaries and has been associated with abnormal body experiences and first rank symptoms. Regarding this last hypothesis, multisensorial integration might have an impact on the way patients perceive themselves since it has an important role in mirror self-perception.

62.1 Visualizing Mental Representations of Emotional Faces in Schizophrenia

Background: The ability to perceive, recognize and process own and others’ emotions is crucial for efficient and effective social communication. Many different tasks have been used to investigate impairments herein in patients with schizophrenia. Evidence suggests that perception, discrimination and recognition of affective facial expressions are impaired in schizophrenia patients (Green, Horan & Lee, 2015; Chan et al 2010). Importantly, not everyone may interpret the same facial expression similarly. People match their internal representation of specific facial expressions to perceived faces and variation in these internal representations may result in distortions of social reality. The impairments in face and/or emotion processing and the bias toward a more negative experience may be causally related to degradation of the internal representation itself or to disturbances in the higher order evaluation of visual input against functionally intact internal representations. Methods: We use a data-driven technique of psychophysical reverse correlation, which makes it possible to visualize internal representations on computer screens. Participants judge noisy images of faces that are created by superimposing random noise on a single constant base face. The random noise distorts the base face at the pixel level, generating facial variation across stimuli that is fully unconstrained and unaffected by researchers’ a priori expectations. The participants’ responses to a large number of faces are then used to model the facial information that was idiosyncratically diagnostic for the judgments. This analysis yields a classification image (CI) for each participant, which visualizes the facial characteristics that drive judgments of emotional expressions (i.e., their internal representation). Specifically, we used reverse correlation image classification (RCIC) to investigate and reconstruct the mental representation of trustworthiness as expressed on the face. Results: Thus far, we have reliable data from 11 patients and 9 controls. While our results are preliminary, they show that patients are capable of performing the task adequately. Both a visual inspection of the group-level visualizations of the 3 constructs probed (i.e., untrustworthy, neutral, and trustworthy) as well as the computed correlations between these visualizations suggest that the internal representation of these constructs is less expressive in patients when compared to controls. Conclusion: Being able to visualize mental representations of trustworthy and untrustworthy faces in patients with schizophrenia opens up the possibility of further use of RCIC tasks in the investigation of emotion-processing deficiencies in schizophrenia.

Social Support of Male and Female Care Givers of Individuals Suffering From Schizophrenia

Background: Schizophrenia is a severe disorder that typically begins in late adolescence or early adulthood and characterized by profound disruption in thinking and perception, affecting language, thought, perception and sense of self. The consequences of the illness for the individual affected, his or her family, and society in general are devastating. Caring of individual with schizophrenia is a big challenge for caregivers. During care giving of individual with schizophrenia caregiver has started to avoid his health care, family responsibility, job as well as social interaction with friends, neighbours and relatives. Individual’s illness creates many problems for caregivers in community. Social support largely depends on the family’s reaction to illness, if they are rejecting, intolerant of dependence, or unsympathetic to the needs of the patients, then they may offer too little support. Aim: The aim of the study is to assess and compare the social support of male and female care givers of patients suffering from schizophrenia. Methods: The present study was a hospital based cross sectional comparative study among the male and female caregivers of Schizophrenia. Purposive sampling technique was used and sample size consists of a total of 60 caregivers of patients with Schizophrenia 30 male caregivers of patients with Schizophrenia and 30 female caregivers of patients with schizophrenia. Results &amp; Conclusion: There was no significant found between the two groups. Hence we can conclude that social support is almost equal in male and female caregiver. Care givers of patients suffering from schizophrenia face the similar circumstances.

Rethinking the Use of Neutral Faces as a Baseline in fMRI Neuroimaging Studies of Axis-I Psychiatric Disorders.

Major Axis-I disorders including major depressive disorder (MDD), bipolar disorder (BD), anxiety disorder, and schizophrenia are associated with a host of aberrations in the way social stimuli are processed. Face perception tasks are often used in neuroimaging research of emotion processing in both healthy and patient populations, and to date, there exists a mounting body of evidence, both behavioral and within the brain, indicating that emotional faces compared to neutral faces are processed abnormally by those with Axis-I disorders relative to healthy control (HC) groups. The use of neutral faces as a "baseline control condition" is predicated on the assumption that neutral faces are processed in the same way HCs and individuals with major Axis-I disorders. In this paper, existing fMRI studies examining the way neutral faces are processed in groups with Axis-I disorders involving socioaffective perception are reviewed. In reviewing available studies, a consistent pattern of results demonstrated that these disorders are associated with abnormal frontolimbic activity in response to neutral faces and in particular within the amygdala and prefrontal regions such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) compared to HC groups. Specifically, increased amygdala activation was consistently reported in response to neutral faces in anxiety disorders and schizophrenia. Abnormal medial PFC activity was reported in patients with MDD, and patients with BD exhibit decreased activity in the DLPFC and ACC relative to HCs. In addition, specific suggestions to overcome these obstacles with new research and additional analyses are discussed.

Attentional processing of emotional faces in schizophrenia: Evidence from eye tracking.

Severe emotional disturbances such as anxiety and depression have been closely related to aberrant attentional processing of emotional stimuli. However, this has been little studied in schizophrenia, which is also characterized by marked emotional impairments such as heightened negative affect and anhedonia. In the current study, we investigated temporal dynamics of motivated attention to emotional stimuli in schizophrenia. For this purpose, we tracked eye movements of 22 individuals with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (ISZs) and 19 healthy controls (HCs) to emotional (i.e., happy, sad, angry) and neutral face pairs presented either for 500 ms or 1,500 ms. Initial fixation direction and viewing time at 3 successive intervals (0-500, 500-1,000, 1,000-1,500 ms) were calculated. The results showed that both ISZs and HCs were more likely to orient initial fixations and exhibited longer viewing times to emotional than neutral faces. However, compared with HCs, ISZs allocated less attention to overall faces during the late stage (1,000-1,500 ms) when one of the paired faces displayed negative emotions. Furthermore, positive symptoms were highly associated with initial fixation avoidance to angry faces while depressive symptoms were related to later avoidance of angry faces. Both social amotivation and poor interpersonal functioning were closely related to diminished sustained attention to happy faces. This suggests that early attentional capture of emotional salience may be relatively preserved in schizophrenia, but the people with this disorder display an atypical late attentional process characterized by generalized attentional avoidance of negative stimuli. Of note, aberrant attentional processes of social threat and reward were closely associated with major symptoms and functioning in this disorder. (PsycINFO Database Record

Assessing the impact of multi-disciplinary teaching sessions on medical students attitudes to mental illness and to psychiatry as a career

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Objectives: The aim of this research was to assess the impact of multi-disciplinary teaching sessions on medical students attitudes to mental illness and to psychiatry as a career. Methods: An undergraduate module entitled "psychiatry and society" was developed and taught to students by a multi-disciplinary group. This included academics from other disciplines such as; economics, history, philosophy, sociology and non-academics such as representatives of refugees/asylum seekers, the travelling community, the news media and other social stakeholders. Behavioural learning objectives were devised for this lecture series entitled "psychiatry and society" . At the beginning and at the end of the lecture series measures of attitudes to mental illness and stigma were administered to the student group in attendance at the lectures. These include; the Attitudes to Mental Illness Questionnaire (Luty et al 2006), the Social Distance Scale (Bogardus 1926) and the attitudes to psychiatry as a career (Cutler et al 2006). The student group was surveyed at the beginning (March) and end (October) of the lecture series. Results: In both the March and October groups the level of acceptance was high overall. There is an increase in acceptance at all levels in the later group, with near unanimous acceptance at the more distant levels. In the March group there was a higher rate of acceptance for personal friends and neighbours than for co-workers in the same occupation. In the October group there was a higher level of acceptance for close personal friends than for neighbours or co-workers. This suggests that the social distance theory may not apply to mental illness. These results indicate that the most marked change in attitudes was in relation to schizophrenia. There was a shift away from neutral positions which could indicate a greater degree of knowledge. The trend was towards more accepting attitudes, with the exception of the effect on the individual's career. However this could be seen as reflecting a greater appreciation of the reality of discrimination that patients with Schizophrenia face after the lecture series, rather than stigmatising attitudes amongst the student group towards people with Schizophrenia.In relation to career interest in Psychiatry, the levels of agreement that the earning potential of psychiatrists was poor and that the quality of life of psychiatrists was low is high in both groups. These figures actually increased between March and October. So did those agreeing/strongly agreeing with the statement that working with psychiatric patients was unrewarding and that family and friends hold psychiatrists in low esteem. When it comes to the factors associated with a positive attitude to psychiatry as a career, they are unsurprisingly a mirror image of those associated with a negative attitude. Conclusion: Students responses to the statements indicating why they would not be interested in psychiatry as a career showed some change between the groups. The move is towards a slightly more positive view of how interesting the intellectual content of Psychiatry as a discipline is. Agreement with the perception that psychiatry is of low status amongst medical professionals changed with students moving to a more neutral position.

The Impact of the Sensory Integration Approach on Positive and Negative Symptoms in a Patient With Non-Paranoid Schizophrenia: A Case Report

Introduction: One of the problems that people with schizophrenia face is the inability to understand and interpret the sensory input from the environment. This report aims to describe the effects of the sensory integration approach on non-paranoid schizophrenia. The treatment involved eight sessions held 3 days a week and lasting 45 minutes each. The patient had a defined Iranians form social relationships schizophrenia evaluated and treatment. Sensory integration therapy in these patients focused on the following elements: vestibular and proprioceptive senses, exercises to improve walking, improving upper extremity coordination and movement, writing activities, cognitive skills, activities of daily living, and family therapy. Case Presentation: The subject (A.H.) was a 32-year-old male graduate student with no history of previous hospitalization. His diagnosis was schizophrenia. The reason for his hospitalization was that he was angry and violent toward his family. In addition, the patient had limited verbal and nonverbal skills, issues with self-control, and restricted community involvement. The results of the patient’s treatment for schizophrenia was assessed via a questionnaire on social skills. Conclusions: After eight sessions, increased awareness of the environment, improved posture and gait pattern, improved motivation and enjoyment, improved patient tolerance, improved appearance and personal hygiene, loss of purposeful behavior, a realistic plan of action every day, improved attention span, improved decision-making skills, and improved community involvement and coping skills were achieved. The environment is rich in sensory stimuli. The integration and processing of each individual senses creates different behavioral responses. The results showed that a sensory integration approach combined with drug therapy is an effective treatment for patients with schizophrenia.

Perception of the duration of emotional faces in schizophrenic patients.

The level of emotional timing deficit is a critical determinant of daily functions and social interactions in people with schizophrenia. This study demonstrated that people with schizophrenia have significant deficits in emotional time perception. Behaviorally, while the healthy controls overestimated the duration of happy and fearful faces, the patients underestimated the duration of emotional and neutral faces. Accordingly, an online ERP index of timing—the contingent negative variation (CNV) displayed larger amplitudes for emotional faces in the controls, whereas the CNV in the patients only showed overall smaller amplitudes when compared with the controls. In addition, the results of the N170 and the CNV suggest that the emotional processing and timing for facial expressions in schizophrenia might have a pattern of two-stage deterioration. Findings from the present work point to the importance of considering the time dimension of emotional processing in schizophrenia, based on which we are likely to discover aspects of emotional deficits that would be unnoticed in other studies. Furthermore, the perception deviation of the duration of emotional faces in schizophrenia suggests us to consider the magnitude of this temporal deviation as a quantitative biomarker for specific emotional/social dysfunctions in schizophrenia.

Perception of faces in schizophrenia: Subjective (self-report) vs. objective (psychophysics) assessments

ObjectivesFace perception impairment in schizophrenia has been demonstrated, mostly through experimental studies. How this laboratory-defined behavioral impairment is associated with patients’ perceptual experience of various faces in everyday life is however unclear. This question is important because a first-person account of face perception has direct consequences on social functioning of patients. In this study, we adapted and administered a self-reported questionnaire on narrative perceptual experience of faces along with psychophysical assessments of face perception in schizophrenia. MethodsThe self-reported questionnaire includes six rating items of face-related functioning in everyday life, providing a subjective measure of face perception. The psychophysical assessment determines perceptual threshold for discriminating different facial identities, providing an objective measure of face perception. ResultsCompared to controls (n = 25), patients (n = 35) showed significantly lower scores (worse performance) in the subjective assessment and significantly higher thresholds (worse performance) in the objective assessment. The subjective and objective face perception assessments were moderately correlated in controls but not in patients. The subjective face perception assessments were significantly correlated with measurements of a social cognitive ability (Theory of Mind), again in controls but not in patients. ConclusionThese results suggest that in schizophrenia the quality of face-related functioning in everyday life is degraded and the role that basic face discrimination capacity plays in face-related everyday functioning is disrupted.

Simultaneous face and voice processing in schizophrenia

While several studies have consistently demonstrated abnormalities in the unisensory processing of face and voice in schizophrenia (SZ), the extent of abnormalities in the simultaneous processing of both types of information remains unclear. To address this issue, we used event-related potentials (ERP) methodology to probe the multisensory integration of face and non-semantic sounds in schizophrenia.EEG was recorded from 18 schizophrenia patients and 19 healthy control (HC) subjects in three conditions: neutral faces (visual condition-VIS); neutral non-semantic sounds (auditory condition-AUD); neutral faces presented simultaneously with neutral non-semantic sounds (audiovisual condition-AUDVIS).When compared with HC, the schizophrenia group showed less negative N170 to both face and face–voice stimuli; later P270 peak latency in the multimodal condition of face–voice relative to unimodal condition of face (the reverse was true in HC); reduced P400 amplitude and earlier P400 peak latency in the face but not in the voice–face condition.Thus, the analysis of ERP components suggests that deficits in the encoding of facial information extend to multimodal face–voice stimuli and that delays exist in feature extraction from multimodal face–voice stimuli in schizophrenia. In contrast, categorization processes seem to benefit from the presentation of simultaneous face–voice information. Timepoint by timepoint tests of multimodal integration did not suggest impairment in the initial stages of processing in schizophrenia.

Efficacy of identifying neural components in the face and emotion processing system in schizophrenia using a dynamic functional localizer

Schizophrenia is associated with deficits in face perception and emotion recognition. Despite consistent behavioural results, the neural mechanisms underlying these cognitive abilities have been difficult to isolate, in part due to differences in neuroimaging methods used between studies for identifying regions in the face processing system. Given this problem, we aimed to validate a recently developed fMRI-based dynamic functional localizer task for use in studies of psychiatric populations and specifically schizophrenia. Previously, this functional localizer successfully identified each of the core face processing regions (i.e. fusiform face area, occipital face area, superior temporal sulcus), and regions within an extended system (e.g. amygdala) in healthy individuals. In this study, we tested the functional localizer success rate in 27 schizophrenia patients and in 24 community controls. Overall, the core face processing regions were localized equally between both the schizophrenia and control group. Additionally, the amygdala, a candidate brain region from the extended system, was identified in nearly half the participants from both groups. These results indicate the effectiveness of a dynamic functional localizer at identifying regions of interest associated with face perception and emotion recognition in schizophrenia. The use of dynamic functional localizers may help standardize the investigation of the facial and emotion processing system in this and other clinical populations.

Supplemental Material for Attentional Processing of Emotional Faces in Schizophrenia: Evidence From Eye Tracking

Supplemental Material for Attentional Processing of Emotional Faces in Schizophrenia: Evidence From Eye Tracking