Dataset Information

Attentional disengagement from emotional stimuli in schizophrenia.

ABSTRACT: Previous research indicates that abnormal attention-emotion interactions are related to symptom presentation in individuals with schizophrenia. However, the individual components of attention responsible for this dysfunction are unclear. In the current study we examined the possibility that schizophrenia patients with higher levels of negative symptoms (HI-NEG: n=14) have greater difficulty disengaging attention from unpleasant stimuli than patients with low negative symptoms (LOW-NEG: n=18) or controls (CN: n=27). Participants completed an exogenous emotional cueing task that required them to focus on an initial emotional or neutral cue and subsequently shift attention to a separate location outside of foveal vision to detect a target stimulus (letter). Results indicated that HI-NEG patients had greater difficulty disengaging attention from unpleasant stimuli than CN or LOW-NEG patients; however, behavioral performance did not differ among the groups for pleasant stimuli. Higher self-reported trait negative affect was also associated with greater difficulty disengaging attention from unpleasant stimuli. Abnormalities in disengaging attention from unpleasant stimuli may thus play a critical role in the formation and maintenance of both negative symptoms and trait negative affect in individuals with schizophrenia.

SUBMITTER: Strauss GP

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3159745 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Attentional disengagement from emotional stimuli in schizophrenia.

Strauss Gregory P GP Llerena Katiah K Gold James M JM

Schizophrenia research 20110623 1-3

Previous research indicates that abnormal attention-emotion interactions are related to symptom presentation in individuals with schizophrenia. However, the individual components of attention responsible for this dysfunction are unclear. In the current study we examined the possibility that schizophrenia patients with higher levels of negative symptoms (HI-NEG: n=14) have greater difficulty disengaging attention from unpleasant stimuli than patients with low negative symptoms (LOW-NEG: n=18) or ...[more]

PMID: 21703824

Similar Datasets

Project description:Emotion dysfunction has long been considered a cardinal feature across psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia and affective psychosis. However, few studies have used objective markers of emotional function to compare psychotic disorders to one another, and fewer studies have examined such markers within a longitudinal framework. Here, we examine one objective marker of emotional responsivity, the late positive potential (LPP), which is a centro-parietal event-related potential (ERP) that tracks the dynamic allocation of attention to emotional vs. neutral stimuli. We used the LPP to characterize abnormal emotional responsivity by relating it to negative, depressive, and psychotic symptoms among two clinical groups: individuals diagnosed with affective psychosis and individuals with schizophrenia. We also used a long-term longitudinal framework, examining concurrent associations between LPP amplitude and symptom severity, as well as prospective associations with symptoms 4 years later. Participants were 74 individuals with psychotic illness: 37 with schizophrenia spectrum disorders and 37 with a primary affective disorder (psychotic bipolar disorder, psychotic depression). There were no mean-level differences in LPP amplitude between the schizophrenia spectrum and primary affective psychosis group. In the primary affective psychosis group, reduced LPP amplitude was associated with greater depressive, negative, and psychotic symptom severity, both concurrently and at follow-up; associations between LPP and symptoms were not observed within the schizophrenia spectrum group. This pattern of results suggests that the neural correlates of emotion dysfunction may differ across psychotic disorders. One possibility is that schizophrenia is characterized by a decoupling of symptom severity and emotional processing. Such findings underscore the importance of analyzing transdiagnostic samples to determine common or specific symptom relationships across various patient populations.

Dataset Information

Attentional disengagement from emotional stimuli in schizophrenia.

Publications

Attentional disengagement from emotional stimuli in schizophrenia.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets