Decoding emotion of the other differs among schizophrenia patients and schizoaffective patients: A pilot study

Abstract

The deficit in ability to attribute mental states such as thoughts, beliefs, and intentions of another person is a key component in the functional impairment of social cognition in schizophrenia. In the current study, we compared the ability of persons with first episode schizophrenia (FE-SZ) and individuals with schizophrenia displaying symptomatic remission (SZ-CR) to decode the mental state of others with healthy individuals and schizoaffective patients. In addition, we analyzed the effect of dopamine-related genes polymorphism on the ability to decode the mental state of another, and searched for different genetic signatures. Our results show that overall, individuals with schizophrenia performed worse in the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” (eyes) test, a simple well-defined task to infer the mental state of others than healthy individuals. Within the schizophrenia group, schizoaffective scored significantly higher than FE-SZ, SZ-CR, and healthy individuals. No difference was observed in performance between FE-SZ and SZ-CR subjects. Interestingly, FE-SZ and SZ-CR, but not schizoaffective individuals, performed worse in decoding negative and neutral emotional valance than the healthy control group. At the genetic level, we observed a significant effect of the DAT genotype, but not D4R genotype, on the eyes test performance. Our data suggest that understanding the mental state of another person is a trait marker of the illness, and might serve as an intermediate phenotype in the diagnostic process of schizophrenia disorders, and raise the possibility that DA-related DAT gene might have a role in decoding the mental state of another person.

Negative and Neutral Valences of Affective Theory of Mind are More Impaired than Positive Valence in Clinically Stable Schizophrenia Patients

“…Here, it was shown that both first episode and chronic schizophrenia patients performed worse in decoding negative and neutral emotional valances than the control group, yet no differences were observed in positive valence. 18 There is a consensus agreeing patients with schizophrenia have difficulties decoding the emotion perception of others, but there are two hypotheses regarding the nature of these deficits. The first is that the emotional perception impairment is secondary to generalized cognitive impairments, e.g., visuoperceptual ability.…”

The continuing story of schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder: One condition or two?

“…Components of social cognition include emotion perception and regulation and “theory of mind,” or the ability to imagine the psychological states and experiences of others (Green et al, 2015). The small relevant literature is inconsistent, with some reports that schizoaffective disorder patients outperform those with schizophrenia on theory of mind tasks (Chen et al, 2012; Fiszdon et al, 2007; Tadmor et al, 2016). In contrast, other studies indicate no significant differences between groups in terms of theory of mind (Greig et al, 2004; Hooper et al, 2010) or emotion perception (Fiszdon et al, 2007).…”

Improvement of Theory of Mind in Schizophrenia: A 15-Year Follow-Up Study

“…ToM dysfunctions, as characterized by laboratory tests, are thought to be a hallmark feature of schizophrenia [1][2][3][4][5], which is present before the onset of psychosis [6,7] and in the biological relatives of schizophrenia patients [8][9][10]. Therefore, ToM dysfunctions may be viewed as potential endophenotypes [11][12][13][14], although the results are not equivocal and straightforward [15][16][17][18][19][20]. On the other hand, several studies highlighted the relevance of ToM functions in clinical outcome, functional prognosis, and quality of life in schizophrenia [21,22].…”

“…To our knowledge, there are no similar long-term investigations into ToM functions in schizophrenia. Based on previous results [11][12][13][14], we hypothesized that patients with schizophrenia will show similar or worse performances on the RMET at the follow-up testing session relative to the baseline values. In addition, we also used tests for executive functions, attention, and speed of information processing to compare social cognitive (RMET) and neurocognitive functions.…”