Studies of Emotion
Raquel E. Gur, M.D., Ph.D. |
Ruben C. Gur, Ph.D. |
The Karl and Linda Rickels Professor |
Professor, Departments of Psychiatry, Neurology & Radiology |
Christian Kohler, M.D. |
James Loughead, Ph.D. |
Clinical Director, Neuropsychiatry |
Post-Doctoral Fellow |
Deficits in affect recognition are among the most pervasive symptoms of schizophrenia, and are one of the most glaring reasons for patients' difficulties with interpersonal interactions. Facial expression recognition and speech and voice perception have been studied in individuals with schizophrenia by many groups and in a wide variety of ways. People with schizophrenia have a generalized impairment in facial perception, having difficulty not only with recognizing the emotional content of an image but the age of the model and whether the face is familiar. In addition, the duration of illness was consistently related to poor performance on the affect recognition tests. A robustly observed difficulty in patients with schizophrenia is the assignment of emotional valence to neutral faces. The magnitude of the deficit underscores the salience of emotional impairment in schizophrenia, and its relation to cognitive dysfunction in this disorder merits further scrutiny.
In addition to the obvious clinical demand for a better understanding of patients' difficulties in this area, pinpointing specific areas affected by schizophrenia helps identify neuroanatomical landmarks and genetic markers of interest for future research. Facial expressions of emotion are increasingly being used in neurscience as probes for functional imaging and as stimuli for studying hemispheric specialization for face and emotion processing. Some functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have reported increased amygdala response during exposure to emotional stimuli, and recent findings reflect functional amygdala abnormalities in overt displays of fear in schizophrenic patients. Lack of amygdala activation in obvious aversive stimuli and enhanced amygdalar response to ambiguous stimuli might be explained by an altered threshold at which the amygdala response to fearful stimuli.
Our lab is particularly interested in designing methodological approaches that will be better indices of response. One of the ways in which we have sought to do this is in creating realistic, three-dimensional, computerized faces to use in our recognition tasks.
ONGOING STUDIES
- The Neurobiology of Affective Dysfunction in Schizophrenia
- The Study of Emotional Processes in Schizophrenia: A Longitudinal Study
ABOUT THE TEAM
- Principle Investigators
- Raquel E. Gur, M.D., Ph.D.
- Ruben C. Gur, Ph.D.
- Christian Kohler, M.D.
- James Loughead, Ph.D.