Dataset Information

Enhanced Automatic Action Imitation and Intact Imitation-Inhibition in Schizophrenia.

ABSTRACT: Imitation plays a key role in social learning and in facilitating social interactions and likely constitutes a basic building block of social cognition that supports higher-level social abilities. Recent findings suggest that patients with schizophrenia have imitation impairments that could contribute to the social impairments associated with the disorder. However, extant studies have specifically assessed voluntary imitation or automatic imitation of emotional stimuli without controlling for potential confounders. The imitation impairments seen might therefore be secondary to other cognitive, motoric, or emotional deficits associated with the disorder. To overcome this issue, we used an automatic imitation paradigm with nonemotional stimuli to assess automatic imitation and the top-down modulation of imitation where participants were required to lift one of 2 fingers according to a number shown on the screen while observing the same or the other finger movement. In addition, we used a control task with a visual cue in place of a moving finger, to isolate the effect of observing finger movement from other visual cueing effects. Data from 33 patients (31 medicated) and 40 matched healthy controls were analyzed. Patients displayed enhanced imitation and intact top-down modulation of imitation. The enhanced imitation seen in patients may have been medication induced as larger effects were seen in patients receiving higher antipsychotic doses. In sum, we did not find an imitation impairment in schizophrenia. The results suggest that previous findings of impaired imitation in schizophrenia might have been due to other cognitive, motoric, and/or emotional deficits.

SUBMITTER: Simonsen A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6293210 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Enhanced Automatic Action Imitation and Intact Imitation-Inhibition in Schizophrenia.

Simonsen Arndis A Fusaroli Riccardo R Skewes Joshua Charles JC Roepstorff Andreas A Campbell-Meiklejohn Daniel D Mors Ole O Bliksted Vibeke V

Schizophrenia bulletin 20190101 1

Imitation plays a key role in social learning and in facilitating social interactions and likely constitutes a basic building block of social cognition that supports higher-level social abilities. Recent findings suggest that patients with schizophrenia have imitation impairments that could contribute to the social impairments associated with the disorder. However, extant studies have specifically assessed voluntary imitation or automatic imitation of emotional stimuli without controlling for po ...[more]

PMID: 29474687

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Project description:The defining character of tics is that they can be transiently suppressed by volitional effort of will, and at a behavioural level this has led to the concept that tics result from a failure of inhibition. However, this logic conflates the mechanism responsible for the production of tics with that used in suppressing them. Volitional inhibition of motor output could be increased to prevent the tic from reaching the threshold for expression, although this has been extensively investigated with conflicting results. Alternatively, automatic inhibition could prevent the initial excitation of the striatal tic focus-a hypothesis we have previously introduced. To reconcile these competing hypotheses, we examined different types of motor inhibition in a group of 19 patients with primary tic disorders and 15 healthy volunteers. We probed proactive and reactive inhibition using the conditional stop-signal task, and applied transcranial magnetic stimulation to the motor cortex, to assess movement preparation and execution. We assessed automatic motor inhibition with the masked priming task. We found that volitional movement preparation, execution and inhibition (proactive and reactive) were not impaired in tic disorders. We speculate that these mechanisms are recruited during volitional tic suppression, and that they prevent expression of the tic by inhibiting the nascent excitation released by the tic generator. In contrast, automatic inhibition was abnormal/impaired in patients with tic disorders. In the masked priming task, positive and negative compatibility effects were found for healthy controls, whereas patients with tics exhibited strong positive compatibility effects, but no negative compatibility effect indicative of impaired automatic inhibition. Patients also made more errors on the masked priming task than healthy control subjects and the types of errors were consistent with impaired automatic inhibition. Errors associated with impaired automatic inhibition were positively correlated with tic severity. We conclude that voluntary movement preparation/generation and volitional inhibition are normal in tic disorders, whereas automatic inhibition is impaired-a deficit that correlated with tic severity and thus may constitute a potential mechanism by which tics are generated.

Project description:IntroductionLexico-semantic disturbances are considered central to schizophrenia. Clinically, their clearest manifestation is in language production. However, most studies probing their underlying mechanisms have used comprehension or categorization tasks. Here, we probed automatic semantic activity prior to language production in schizophrenia using event-related potentials (ERPs).Methods19 people with schizophrenia and 16 demographically-matched healthy controls named target pictures that were very quickly preceded by masked prime words. To probe automatic semantic activity prior to production, we measured the N400 ERP component evoked by these targets. To determine the origin of any automatic semantic abnormalities, we manipulated the type of relationship between prime and target such that they overlapped in (a) their semantic features (semantically related, e.g. "cake" preceding a < picture of a pie >, (b) their initial phonemes (phonemically related, e.g. "stomach" preceding a < picture of a starfish >), or (c) both their semantic features and their orthographic/phonological word form (identity related, e.g. "socks" preceding a < picture of socks >). For each of these three types of relationship, the same targets were paired with unrelated prime words (counterbalanced across lists). We contrasted ERPs and naming times to each type of related target with its corresponding unrelated target.ResultsPeople with schizophrenia showed abnormal N400 modulation prior to naming identity related (versus unrelated) targets: whereas healthy control participants produced a smaller amplitude N400 to identity related than unrelated targets, patients showed the opposite pattern, producing a larger N400 to identity related than unrelated targets. This abnormality was specific to the identity related targets. Just like healthy control participants, people with schizophrenia produced a smaller N400 to semantically related than to unrelated targets, and showed no difference in the N400 evoked by phonemically related and unrelated targets. There were no differences between the two groups in the pattern of naming times across conditions.ConclusionPeople with schizophrenia can show abnormal neural activity associated with automatic semantic processing prior to language production. The specificity of this abnormality to the identity related targets suggests that that, rather than arising from abnormalities of either semantic features or lexical form alone, it may stem from disruptions of mappings (connections) between the meaning of words and their form.

Dataset Information

Enhanced Automatic Action Imitation and Intact Imitation-Inhibition in Schizophrenia.

Publications

Enhanced Automatic Action Imitation and Intact Imitation-Inhibition in Schizophrenia.

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