Hyper- and Hypomentalizing in Patients with First-Episode Schizophrenia: fMRI and Behavioral Studies

Bliksted, Vibeke; Frith, C. D.; Videbech, Poul; Fagerlund, Birgitte; Emborg, Charlotte; Simonsen, Arndis; Roepstorff, Andreas; Campbell-Meiklejohn, Daniel

doi:10.1093/schbul/sby027

Cited by 42 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 59 publications

(84 reference statements)

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“…We hypothesized that individuals with glossolalia show hypermentalization in the absence of mental illness, depressiveanxious features, or enhanced schizotypal traits. In contrast, patients with schizophrenia are characterized by both hypo-and hypermentalization, together with a decreased accuracy in the description of the ATT animations (Bliksted et al, 2016(Bliksted et al, , 2019. We also hypothesized that hypermentalization is related to the subjective experience of intrinsic religiosity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Concerning the psychopathological model of glossolalia, it is notable that altered mentalization is a well-replicated feature of schizophrenia (Abu-Akel and Bailey, 2000;Frith, 2004;Brune, 2005;Bora and Pantelis, 2013;Bliksted et al, 2016Bliksted et al, , 2019Martinez et al, 2019). Some patients exhibit a weakened attribution of mental states (hypomentalization), resulting in social isolation and inflexible communication, which is reminiscent of that seen in individuals with autism-spectrum disorders (Martinez et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Under the circumstances characterized by stress, social threat, and anomalous perceptual experiences, hypermentalization may form the basis for paranoid ideas (Freeman and Garety, 2014;Ballespi et al, 2019). Intriguingly, hypo-and hypermentalization can simultaneously occur in the same patient who experiences social difficulties, impaired language comprehension, and paranoid thoughts at the same time (Bliksted et al, 2016(Bliksted et al, , 2019. Thus, inadequate hypermentalization is a possible common feature of schizophrenia and glossolalia, resulting in different cognitive and behavioral outcomes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Healthy adults describe the actions of the triangles as random movements (e.g., bouncing or wandering), goal-directed willed actions (e.g., fighting or playing), or observers mentalize and attribute mental states to the triangles (e.g., tricking or wanting to hide). In hypomentalization, there are fewer mentalizing descriptions, whereas, in hypermentalization, observers attribute mental states even to random movements (Eddy and Cavanna, 2015;Bliksted et al, 2019). We also used the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), which assesses mentalization driven by the recognition of complex social emotions from facial expression (eye-regions depicted in photographs) ( Baron-Cohen et al, 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Attribution of Mental States in Glossolalia: A Direct Comparison With Schizophrenia

2020

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Glossolalia ("speaking in tongues") is a rhythmic utterance of pseudo-words without consistent semantic meaning and syntactic regularities. Although glossolalia is a culturally embedded religious activity, its connection with psychopathology (e.g., psychotic thought disorder and altered mental state attribution/mentalization) is still a matter of debate. To elucidate this issue, we investigated 32 glossolalists, 32 matched control participants, and 32 patients with schizophrenia using the Animated Triangle Test (ATT) and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET). The ATT can detect hypo-and hypermentalization using animations of two moving triangles. Healthy adults describe these as random movements (e.g., bouncing), willed actions (e.g., playing), or they mentalize (e.g., tricking). We found that glossolalists provided more mentalizing descriptions in the ATT random and intentional movement animations relative to the control participants. They also recognized more mental states in the RMET than the controls. None of them had a diagnosis of mental disorders. In contrast, patients with schizophrenia hypermentalized only in the ATT random movement condition, whereas they showed hypomentalization in the ATT intentional movement condition and in the RMET relative the control subjects. Hypermentalization in the ATT positively correlated with intrinsic religiosity in the glossolalia group. In conclusion, our results demonstrated a substantial difference in the mentalizing ability of glossolalists (generalized hypermentalization) and patients with schizophrenia (both hypo-and hypermentalization).

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Attribution of Mental States in Glossolalia: A Direct Comparison With Schizophrenia

2020

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“…While Das et al found reduced activation of the right superior temporal gyrus (STG), the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and bilateral inferior frontal gyri (IFG) (Das et al, 2012a;2012b), Martin et al showed increased activation of bilateral IFG, left STG and left caudate nucleus (Martin et al, 2016). Finally, Bliksted et al found that patients hyper-mentalized during non-social stimuli, accompanied by increased activation of the anterior medial prefrontal cortex (Bliksted et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aberrant effective connectivity is associated with positive symptoms in first-episode schizophrenia

Dietz

Zhou²,

Veddum

et al. 2019

Preprint

Self Cite

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Schizophrenia is a tenacious psychiatric disorder thought to result from synaptic dysfunction. While symptomatology is traditionally divided into positive and negative symptoms, abnormal social cognition is now recognized a key component of schizophrenia. Nonetheless, we are still lacking a mechanistic understanding of how aberrant synaptic connectivity is expressed in schizophrenia during social perception and how it relates to positive and negative symptomatology. We used fMRI and dynamic causal modelling (DCM) to test for abnormalities in synaptic efficacy in twenty-four patients with first-episode schizophrenia (FES) compared to twenty-five matched controls performing the Human Connectome Project (HCP) social cognition paradigm. Patients had not received regular therapeutic antipsychotics, but were not completely drug naïve. Our data reveal an increase in excitatory feedforward connectivity from motion-sensitive V5 to posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) in patients compared to matched controls. At the same time, were less accurate than controls in judging social stimuli from non-social stimuli. Crucially, patients with a higher degree of positive symptoms had more disinhibition within pSTS, a region computationally involved in Theory of Mind. We interpret these within a predictive coding framework where increased feedforward connectivity may encode aberrant prediction errors from V5 to hierarchically higher pSTS and local disinhibition within pSTS may reflect aberrant encoding of the precision of cortical representations about social stimuli.

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The role of the ventrolateral anterior temporal lobes in social cognition

Balgova

Diveica

Walbrin

et al. 2022

Human Brain Mapping

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A key challenge for neurobiological models of social cognition is to elucidate whether brain regions are specialised for that domain. In recent years, discussion surrounding the role of anterior temporal regions epitomises such debates; some argue the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) is part of a domain‐specific network for social processing, while others claim it comprises a domain‐general hub for semantic representation. In the present study, we used ATL‐optimised fMRI to map the contribution of different ATL structures to a variety of paradigms frequently used to probe a crucial social ability, namely ‘theory of mind’ (ToM). Using multiple tasks enables a clearer attribution of activation to ToM as opposed to idiosyncratic features of stimuli. Further, we directly explored whether these same structures are also activated by a non‐social task probing semantic representations. We revealed that common to all of the tasks was activation of a key ventrolateral ATL region that is often invisible to standard fMRI. This constitutes novel evidence in support of the view that the ventrolateral ATL contributes to social cognition via a domain‐general role in semantic processing and against claims of a specialised social function.

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Hyper- and Hypomentalizing in Patients with First-Episode Schizophrenia: fMRI and Behavioral Studies

Cited by 42 publications

References 59 publications

Attribution of Mental States in Glossolalia: A Direct Comparison With Schizophrenia

Attribution of Mental States in Glossolalia: A Direct Comparison With Schizophrenia

Aberrant effective connectivity is associated with positive symptoms in first-episode schizophrenia

The role of the ventrolateral anterior temporal lobes in social cognition

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