An investigation into event-related responses to emotional faces in early course psychosis
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Abstract
BACKGROUND: Impairments in detecting emotional faces and in the brain’s response to emotional faces have been well documented in psychosis spectrum disorders, especially in individuals with chronic schizophrenia (SZ) and chronic schizoaffective disorder (SZA). However, there has been less research into individuals who are early in their course of psychosis (ECP). In this study, we examined the brains event-related potential (ERP) responses to various static emotional faces in participants with ECP and healthy controls. METHODS: Ten healthy controls and eighteen individuals with ECP completed an emotional face recognition task. Sad, happy, and neutral faces were presented for 1000 ms, and participants then indicated what emotion they believed was displayed. Using electroencephalography (EEG), evoked potential data was obtained using a 128-channel EEG system. ERP data was then analyzed and averaged from channels in the occipital and temporal regions to elucidate the average P100 and N170 amplitudes for each group.
RESULTS: Independent t-tests found that group differences in average N170 amplitudes differed significantly in the sad condition (p < 0.032) with the ECP group having more negative amplitudes than HC participants (HC mean = 0.54, sd = 1.72; ECP mean = -1.09, sd = 3.03). However, N170 amplitudes did not differ significantly between groups in the happy or neutral conditions. P100 average amplitude also displayed no significant differences across any emotional condition. SFS totals and anti-psychotics use also had no significant effect on ERP amplitude differences. CONCLUSION: Emotional face recognition is a complex cognitive process, and paired with a highly heterogenous disorder, results can vary across studies. A significantly higher N170 amplitude in ECP versus control group suggests that a negativity bias could correlate to better recognition of adverse emotional expressions. Future large-scale investigations will be necessary to further solidify these findings.
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2024