Involvement of amygdala–prefrontal dysfunction in the influence of negative emotion on the resolution of cognitive conflict in patients with schizophrenia

Abstract

IntroductionPatients with schizophrenia often have impaired cognition and abnormal conflict control. Conflict control is influenced by the emotional values of stimuli. This study investigated the neural basis of negative emotion interference with conflict control in schizophrenia.MethodsSeventeen patients with schizophrenia and 20 healthy controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing the emotional Simon task, in which positive or negative emotional pictures were located in congruent or incongruent positions. Analysis was focused on identifying brain regions with the significant interaction among group, emotion, and conflict in whole brain voxel‐wise analysis, and abnormality in their functional connectivity in the patient group.ResultsThe regions showing the targeted interaction was the right amygdala, which exhibited significantly reduced activity in the negative congruent (t = −2.168, p = 0.036) and negative incongruent (t = −3.273, p = 0.002) conditions in patients versus controls. The right amygdala also showed significantly lower connectivity with the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the cognitive and emotional loading contrast (negative incongruent—positive congruent) in patients versus controls (t = −5.154, p < 0.01), but not in the cognitive‐only or emotional‐only loading contrast.ConclusionsThese results suggest that negative emotion interferes with cognitive conflict resolution in patients with schizophrenia due to amygdala–dorsolateral prefrontal cortex disconnection. Based on these findings, interventions targeting conflict control under negative emotional influence may promote cognitive rehabilitation in patients with schizophrenia.

M1 Muscarinic Receptors Modulate Fear-Related Inputs to the Prefrontal Cortex: Implications for Novel Treatments of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

“…Treatment with an M 1 PAM before extinction enhanced the consolidation and recall of contextual fear extinction, suggesting that M 1 PAMs may be effective therapeutics to enhance exposure therapy in the clinic. Dysfunctional connectivity between the hippocampus, amygdala, and PFC (46,65) and impaired fear extinction (66) are present in many psychiatric disorders therefore these results and potential translatability may be relevant to disorders other than PTSD. This is especially exciting as M 1 PAMs have entered or completed Phase I trials (see ClinicalTrials.gov Identifiers NCT03220295 and NCT02769065) with schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease as intended therapeutic indications.…”

MIR137 polygenic risk is associated with schizophrenia and affects functional connectivity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

“…In addition, Mothersill and his colleagues also found that MIR137 gene influenced the FCs between the right amygdala and frontal regions (Mothersill et al ., 2014). Moreover, previous studies consistently reported that the FCs of the right amygdala could be impaired in schizophrenia patients (Bjorkquist et al ., 2016; Park et al ., 2018; Yue et al ., 2018). Therefore, we further explored the relationship between the right amygdala FCs and MIR137 PRS in our two independent cohorts with healthy individuals.…”

Interaction of emotion and cognitive control along the psychosis continuum: A critical review

“…These stimuli can be of the same (e.g., both visual; Comte et al, 2017) or different modalities (e.g., auditory vs. visual; Zinchenko et al, 2017). PP struggle to consciously and selectively monitor emotional stimuli that are of primary relevance for a task but incongruent (Comte et al, 2017;Park et al, 2018). They also experience difficulty (reflected in slower reaction times and low accuracy) in judging the emotion conveyed by a face embedded in a broader emotional background serving as an emotional distractor (Comte et al, 2017).…”

“…They also experience difficulty (reflected in slower reaction times and low accuracy) in judging the emotion conveyed by a face embedded in a broader emotional background serving as an emotional distractor (Comte et al, 2017). Similarly, they showed impaired task performance (i.e., slower reaction times) in a modified version of the Simon task that uses emotional face stimuli, in which participants have to press a right-hand response button for a positive stimulus and a left-hand button for a negative emotional stimulus (Park et al, 2018). We did not find any studies with CHR-P individuals or non-clinical individuals with psychoticlike symptoms (Table 2).…”

“…Most studies examining the impact of negative emotion on cognitive control in PP have reported impaired task performance (i.e., slower reaction time; Bertocci et al, 2012;Brotman et al, 2014;Comte et S.X. Duggirala, et al International Journal of Psychophysiology 147 (2020) 156-175 2017; Corbalan et al, 2015;Dichter et al, 2010;Favre et al, 2015;Kim et al, 2015;Mukherjee et al, 2016;Park et al, 2018;Pauly et al, 2008;Pavuluri et al, 2008;Rey et al, 2014), whereas others have shown an enhanced effect of negative emotion (i.e., faster reaction time) compared to neutral stimuli (Becerril and Barch, 2011), or even null effects (Anticevic et al, 2011;Diaz et al, 2011;Eack et al, 2016;Kim et al, 2015). Impaired task performance in cognitive control tasks with negative emotional stimuli in PP could result from an enhanced attentional bias towards stimuli representing threat, fear, and paranoia.…”