Reduced intra-amygdala activity to positively valenced faces in adolescent schizophrenia offspring

Abstract

Studies suggest that the affective response is impaired in both schizophrenia and adolescent offspring of schizophrenia patients. Adolescent offspring of patients are developmentally vulnerable to impairments in several domains, including affective responding, yet the bases of these impairments and their relation to neuronal responses within the limbic system are poorly understood. The amygdala is the central region devoted to the processing of emotional valence and its sub-nuclei including the baso-lateral and centro-medial are organized in a relative hierarchy of affective processing. Outputs from the centro-medial nucleus converge on regions involved in the autonomous regulation of behavior, and outputs from the basolateral nucleus modulate the response of reward processing regions. Here using fMRI we assessed the intra-amygdala response to positive, negative, and neutral valenced faces in a group of controls (with no family history of psychosis) and offspring of schizophrenia parents (n=44 subjects in total). Subjects performed an affective continuous performance task during which they continually appraised whether the affect signaled by a face on a given trial was the same or different from the previous trial (regardless of facial identity). Relative to controls, offspring showed reduced activity in the left centro-medial nucleus to positively (but not negatively or neutral) valenced faces. These results were independent of behavioral/cognitive performance (equal across groups) suggesting that an impaired affective substrate in the intra-amygdala response may lie at the core of deficits of social behavior that have been documented in this population.

Theory of Mind in Children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders

“…These findings extend this work by showing the RME task to be a useful and valid test for detecting impairment in social cognition independent of IQ and EF in children with FASD. Previous studies have found activation in the amygdala, the superior temporal gyrus and the posterior superior temporal sulcus, using RME or other affective processing tasks (Adams et al, 2009; Barbour et al, 2010; Baron-Cohen et al, 1999b). Hence, in future neuroimaging research one would expect alcohol-related deficits in brain regions related to affective processing in children with FASD.…”

Functional mapping of dynamic happy and fearful facial expressions in young adults with familial risk for psychosis — Oulu Brain and Mind Study

“…In previous facial affect fMRI studies patients with schizophrenia and their non-psychotic relatives showed limbic system hypoactivation similarities (Barbour et al, 2010;Habel et al, 2010). In one study, patients with schizophrenia and their healthy siblings reported similar reduced right hemisphere activation (de Achával et al, 2012).…”

The neural correlates of performance in adolescents at risk for schizophrenia: Inefficiently increased cortico-striatal responses measured with fMRI

“…SCZ-Off are highly vulnerable both to developmental deviations in bio-behavioral signals (Barbour et al, 2010; Diwadkar et al, 2001; Diwadkar et al, 2006), and most likely as a consequence of these deviations, to psychiatric disorders (Paus et al, 2008). Incidence rates of schizophrenia-related or not otherwise specified psychosis in offspring of schizophrenia patients range from 8 to 20%, that is up to twenty times higher than the incidence in the general population (Erlenmeyer-Kimling & Cornblatt, 1987).…”