An electrophysiological investigation of emotional abnormalities in groups at risk for schizophrenia-spectrum personality disorders

Abstract

Both extreme levels of social anhedonia (SocAnh) and perceptual aberration/magical ideation (PerMag) are associated with risk for schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and with emotional abnormalities. Yet, the nature of any psychophysiological-measured affective abnormality, including the role of automatic/controlled processes, is unclear. We examined the late positive potential (LPP) during passive viewing (to assess automatic processing) and during cognitive reappraisal (to assess controlled processing) in three groups: SocAnh, PerMag, and controls. The SocAnh group exhibited an increased LPP when viewing negative images. Further, SocAnh exhibited greater reductions in the LPP for negative images when told to use strategies to alter negative emotion. Similar to SocAnh, PerMag exhibited an increased LPP when viewing negative images. However, PerMag also exhibited an increased LPP when viewing positive images as well as an atypical decreased LPP when increasing positive emotion. Overall, these results suggest that at-risk groups are associated with shared and unique automatic and controlled abnormalities.

Implicit emotion regulation deficits in individuals with high schizotypal traits: an ERP study

“…They suggested that 'modulation of neural responses by a cognitive emotion regulation strategy appears to be impaired in schizophrenia during the first two seconds after exposure to unpleasant stimuli. ' Moreover, it was reported that people at risk for schizophrenia spectrum disorder such as social anhedonia also have abnormalities in emotion regulation processing, which is reflected by enhanced LPP amplitude when passively viewing negative pictures compared to controls 67 . The absence of any post-priming LPP modulation from either ER-related and ER-unrelated conditions across schizotypy and control groups, leads us to speculate that deficits displayed by individuals with schizotypal traits in the late stage of explicit emotion regulation are not mirrored by deficits at the same stage of the implicit regulation.…”

Differential emotional abnormalities among schizotypy clusters

“…Past research has shown that positive and negative schizotypy are associated with both shared and unique emotional abnormalities (Fung et al, 2017;Martin et al, 2017). For instance, higher levels of positive schizotypy traits and higher levels of negative schizotypy traits are associated with higher trait negative affect.…”

Affective forecasting and accuracy in social anhedonia: Predicted and experienced emotion for a social interaction

“…Although people with SocAnh engage in fewer social interactions, they report doing so by choice (Brown et al, 2007;Kwapil et al, 2009). Thus, people with elevated levels of SocAnh exhibit a genuine preference for solitude, which has been differentiated from introversion (Martin, Karcher, Bartholow, Siegle & Kerns, 2017) and social anxiety (Brown et al, 2007;Brown, Silvia, Myin-Germeys, Lewandowski, & Kwapil, 2008;Cicero, Krieg, Becker, & Kerns, 2016). This lack of pleasure and withdraw from social connection contrasts the well-documented "need to belong" (Brown et al, 2007;Silvia & Kwapil, 2011), which describes the motivation to pursue and enjoy the connection with others as stemming from a fundamental human need.…”