The Deficit of Multimodal Perception of Congruent and Non-Congruent Fearful Expressions in Patients with Schizophrenia: The ERP Study

Abstract

Emotional dysfunction, including flat affect and emotional perception deficits, is a specific symptom of schizophrenia disorder. We used a modified multimodal odd-ball paradigm with fearful facial expressions accompanied by congruent and non-congruent emotional vocalizations (sounds of women screaming and laughing) to investigate the impairment of emotional perception and reactions to other people’s emotions in schizophrenia. We compared subjective ratings of emotional state and event-related potentials (EPPs) in response to congruent and non-congruent stimuli in patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls. The results showed the altered multimodal perception of fearful stimuli in patients with schizophrenia. The amplitude of N50 was significantly higher for non-congruent stimuli than congruent ones in the control group and did not differ in patients. The P100 and N200 amplitudes were higher in response to non-congruent stimuli in patients than in controls, implying impaired sensory gating in schizophrenia. The observed decrease of P3a and P3b amplitudes in patients could be associated with less attention, less emotional arousal, or incorrect interpretation of emotional valence, as patients differed from healthy controls in the emotion scores of non-congruent stimuli. The difficulties in identifying the incoherence of facial and audial components of emotional expression could be significant in understanding the psychopathology of schizophrenia.

Investigating the Relationships of P3b with Negative Symptoms and Neurocognition in Subjects with Chronic Schizophrenia

“…One of the ERPs most extensively studied is P300, a positive-going deflection peaking between 270 and 600 msec, which can be identified following the presentation of infrequent auditory, visual or somatosensory stimuli [ 83 , 84 ]. In addition, P300 can be recorded using experimental paradigms focusing on decision-making and risk evaluation [ 85 ], motivation and anticipation of reward [ 86 , 87 , 88 , 89 ], perception of emotions [ 90 , 91 ] and allocation of attentional resources [ 92 ]. Different subcomponents of P300 have been categorized, which present distinct neural generator sources, topographic maps and peak latencies depending on the paradigm used [ 92 , 93 , 94 ].…”

Acoustic and Subjective Basis of Emotional Perception in Comatose Patients: A Comparative Study

“…Finally, as we mentioned, we found significant changes in some nonlinear EEG parameters associated with emotional perception [ 5 , 28 ] both in healthy individuals and patients with mental or neurological diseases. In particular, previous studies demonstrated that higher HFD was associated with different emotional states, including affect, fear, happiness, sadness, and empathy [ 5 , 26 , 28 , 63 , 64 ]. The dynamics of Hjorth’s complexity were previously contributed to unpleasant emotions such as irritation [ 5 , 28 ]; the decrease of this parameter during emotional auditory perception was more typical for individuals with mental and neurological disorders than for healthy subjects [ 3 , 5 , 65 ].…”