Effects of Emotionally Affect Adult and Baby’ Photographs in Healthy Controls and Schizophrenic Patients Evaluating by Exploratory Eye Movements

Abstract

Humans obtain a particularly large amount of information for adapting to their environment visually as opposed to other types of sensory input. Specific information is selected from a wide variety of visual stimuli, and then processed to guide behavior. Affection and emotion are critical elements of human relationships: generally, negative emotions impair quality of life, while positive emotions make life pleasurable. Affective stimuli have been shown to influence event-related potentials such as P300 components [1,2] and potentials related to eye movements [3][4][5]. The relationship between mother and baby, in particular, is of fundamental importance in the development of cognitive function and emotion [6]. Schwartz et al. [7] compared responses of healthy adults between emotional and none-motional figure Kurume Medical Journal, 58, 27-33, 2011 Summary: The relationship between mother and baby is of fundamental importance in the development of cognitive function and emotion. In this study we investigated the effects of affective photographs of a mother and baby (crying or smiling faces) and other stimuli (neutral mother or baby faces) on visual cognitive function in schizophrenic patents. We recorded exploratory eye movements in 22 healthy controls and 22 age-matched schizophrenic patients. Total number of right and left field gaze points (right TNGP, left TNGP) in the visual fields were determined using an eye-mark recorder as subjects viewed affectively charged or neutral photographs (crying, smiling or neutral faces). Left TNGP for all mother photographs (crying, smiling or neutral) were significantly larger in controls than patients, and right TNGP for neutral mother photographs were significantly larger in controls than in patients. Right TNGP for photographs of smiling babies were significantly larger in controls than patients, and left TNGP for photographs of both smiling and crying babies were significantly larger in controls than patients. Within the patient group, right TNGP were significantly larger than left TNGP for all mother photographs (crying, smiling or neutral). Left TNGP for photographs of mothers and babies correlated negatively with negative symptom scores. These results suggest that exploratory eye movements when viewing emotionally laded twin stimuli such as photographs of a mother and baby are a useful marker of visual cognitive function in both healthy controls and schizophrenic patients. Key words

Left Eye Scanning Deficit in Schizophrenia Patients under Emotional Loading Task: Comparison with Healthy Controls

“…In a previous study, Nishiura et al [9] reported that viewing images with positive content reduced left TNGP in schizophrenia. Moreover, we also reported that the left TNGP was smaller in schizophrenic patients under positive affect with voice [11]. The present finding that TNGP was significantly smaller and did not recover after the second viewing of smiling babies only in the left field is consistent with previous findings of abnormal left field scanning in schizophrenia during viewing of positive emotional stimuli.…”

“…It has been reported that schizophrenic patients have a dysfunction in left eye scanning [8][9][10][11]. Healthy controls first scan the left field of a screen, but schizophrenic patients were found to hardly scan the left field at all.…”