Affective Flattening in Patients with Schizophrenia: Differential Association with Amygdala Response to Threat-Related Facial Expression under Automatic and Controlled Processing Conditions

Psychiatry Investigation
Christian LindnerThomas Suslow

Abstract

Early neuroimaging studies have demonstrated amygdala hypoactivation in schizophrenia but more recent research based on paradigms with minimal cognitive loads or examining automatic processing has observed amygdala hyperactivation. Hyperactivation was found to be related to affective flattening. In this study, amygdala responsivity to threat-related facial expression was investigated in patients as a function of automatic versus controlled processing and patients' flat affect. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to measure amygdala activation in 36 patients with schizophrenia and 42 healthy controls. During scanning, a viewing task with masked and unmasked fearful and neutral faces was presented. Patients exhibited increased amygdala response to unmasked fearful faces. With respect to masked fearful faces, no between-group differences emerged for the sample as a whole but a subsample of patients with flat affect showed heightened amygdala activation. The amygdala response to masked fearful faces was positively correlated with the degree of flat affect. Conversely, amygdala response to unmasked fearful faces was negatively correlated to the severity of affective flattening. In patients, amygdala responses to masked an...Continue Reading

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Citations

Dec 16, 2017·Clinical EEG and Neuroscience·Lynn Mørch-JohnsenJimmy Jensen
Jan 14, 2020·Progress in Neuro-psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry·Sélim Benjamin GuessoumJasmina Mallet

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
SANS

Software Mentioned

SPM5
WFU PickAtlas
Statistical Parametric Mapping ( SPM5
SPSS

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