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Affective Flattening in Patients with Schizophrenia: Differential Association with Amygdala Response to Threat-Related Facial Expression under Automatic and Controlled Processing Conditions

OBJECTIVE: Early neuroimaging studies have demonstrated amygdala hypoactivation in schizophrenia but more recent research based on paradigms with minimal cognitive loads or examining automatic processing has observed amygdala hyperactivation. Hyperactivation was found to be related to affective flat...

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Autores principales: Lindner, Christian, Dannlowski, Udo, Bauer, Jochen, Ohrmann, Patricia, Lencer, Rebekka, Zwitserlood, Pienie, Kugel, Harald, Suslow, Thomas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Korean Neuropsychiatric Association 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4701673/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26766952
http://dx.doi.org/10.4306/pi.2016.13.1.102
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author Lindner, Christian
Dannlowski, Udo
Bauer, Jochen
Ohrmann, Patricia
Lencer, Rebekka
Zwitserlood, Pienie
Kugel, Harald
Suslow, Thomas
author_facet Lindner, Christian
Dannlowski, Udo
Bauer, Jochen
Ohrmann, Patricia
Lencer, Rebekka
Zwitserlood, Pienie
Kugel, Harald
Suslow, Thomas
author_sort Lindner, Christian
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVE: Early neuroimaging studies have demonstrated amygdala hypoactivation in schizophrenia but more recent research based on paradigms with minimal cognitive loads or examining automatic processing has observed amygdala hyperactivation. Hyperactivation was found to be related to affective flattening. In this study, amygdala responsivity to threat-related facial expression was investigated in patients as a function of automatic versus controlled processing and patients' flat affect. METHODS: Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to measure amygdala activation in 36 patients with schizophrenia and 42 healthy controls. During scanning, a viewing task with masked and unmasked fearful and neutral faces was presented. RESULTS: Patients exhibited increased amygdala response to unmasked fearful faces. With respect to masked fearful faces, no between-group differences emerged for the sample as a whole but a subsample of patients with flat affect showed heightened amygdala activation. The amygdala response to masked fearful faces was positively correlated with the degree of flat affect. Conversely, amygdala response to unmasked fearful faces was negatively correlated to the severity of affective flattening. In patients, amygdala responses to masked and unmasked fearful faces showed an inverse correlation. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that amygdala hyperresponsivity to unmasked fearful faces might be a functional characteristic of schizophrenia. Amygdala hyperresponsivity to masked fearful faces might be a specific characteristic of patients with affective flattening. A model of flat affect as a response mechanism to emotional overload is proposed.
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spelling pubmed-47016732016-01-13 Affective Flattening in Patients with Schizophrenia: Differential Association with Amygdala Response to Threat-Related Facial Expression under Automatic and Controlled Processing Conditions Lindner, Christian Dannlowski, Udo Bauer, Jochen Ohrmann, Patricia Lencer, Rebekka Zwitserlood, Pienie Kugel, Harald Suslow, Thomas Psychiatry Investig Original Article OBJECTIVE: Early neuroimaging studies have demonstrated amygdala hypoactivation in schizophrenia but more recent research based on paradigms with minimal cognitive loads or examining automatic processing has observed amygdala hyperactivation. Hyperactivation was found to be related to affective flattening. In this study, amygdala responsivity to threat-related facial expression was investigated in patients as a function of automatic versus controlled processing and patients' flat affect. METHODS: Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to measure amygdala activation in 36 patients with schizophrenia and 42 healthy controls. During scanning, a viewing task with masked and unmasked fearful and neutral faces was presented. RESULTS: Patients exhibited increased amygdala response to unmasked fearful faces. With respect to masked fearful faces, no between-group differences emerged for the sample as a whole but a subsample of patients with flat affect showed heightened amygdala activation. The amygdala response to masked fearful faces was positively correlated with the degree of flat affect. Conversely, amygdala response to unmasked fearful faces was negatively correlated to the severity of affective flattening. In patients, amygdala responses to masked and unmasked fearful faces showed an inverse correlation. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that amygdala hyperresponsivity to unmasked fearful faces might be a functional characteristic of schizophrenia. Amygdala hyperresponsivity to masked fearful faces might be a specific characteristic of patients with affective flattening. A model of flat affect as a response mechanism to emotional overload is proposed. Korean Neuropsychiatric Association 2016-01 2015-10-13 /pmc/articles/PMC4701673/ /pubmed/26766952 http://dx.doi.org/10.4306/pi.2016.13.1.102 Text en Copyright © 2016 Korean Neuropsychiatric Association http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Article
Lindner, Christian
Dannlowski, Udo
Bauer, Jochen
Ohrmann, Patricia
Lencer, Rebekka
Zwitserlood, Pienie
Kugel, Harald
Suslow, Thomas
Affective Flattening in Patients with Schizophrenia: Differential Association with Amygdala Response to Threat-Related Facial Expression under Automatic and Controlled Processing Conditions
title Affective Flattening in Patients with Schizophrenia: Differential Association with Amygdala Response to Threat-Related Facial Expression under Automatic and Controlled Processing Conditions
title_full Affective Flattening in Patients with Schizophrenia: Differential Association with Amygdala Response to Threat-Related Facial Expression under Automatic and Controlled Processing Conditions
title_fullStr Affective Flattening in Patients with Schizophrenia: Differential Association with Amygdala Response to Threat-Related Facial Expression under Automatic and Controlled Processing Conditions
title_full_unstemmed Affective Flattening in Patients with Schizophrenia: Differential Association with Amygdala Response to Threat-Related Facial Expression under Automatic and Controlled Processing Conditions
title_short Affective Flattening in Patients with Schizophrenia: Differential Association with Amygdala Response to Threat-Related Facial Expression under Automatic and Controlled Processing Conditions
title_sort affective flattening in patients with schizophrenia: differential association with amygdala response to threat-related facial expression under automatic and controlled processing conditions
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4701673/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26766952
http://dx.doi.org/10.4306/pi.2016.13.1.102
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