Relationship between Semantic Memory and Social Cognition in Schizophrenia: A Preliminary Analysis

Impairments in social cognitions in schizophrenia are increasingly reported in the last decade but only a few studies have come from Asia. The objective of the study was to evaluated emotion perception, theory of mind and social knowledge in people with schizophrenia compared to healthy controls. Participants were 36 clinically stable outpatients with schizophrenia and 36 normal controls with comparable age and level of education. We administered general neurocognition test (the Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination), emotion perception (the Faces Test), theory of mind (the Eyes Test) and social knowledge (the Situational Features Recognition Test; SFRT). Schizophrenia patients displayed obvious impairment in all three social cognition domains i.e. the Faces Test [13.7 (2.9) vs 15.7 (1.9), P=0.001], the Eyes Test [18.9 (4.4) vs 23.5 (4.4), P<0.001] and SFRT [0.85 (0.09) vs 0.9 (0.05), P=0.002]. The performances on three social cognition tests did not correlate with positive symptoms. Only the Faces Test seemed to be related to negative symptoms. The results demonstrated that there are deficits of social cognitions in schizophrenia even in a clinically stable population.

Factor structure of social cognition in schizophrenia: Investigation of four core domains.

From “under” to “over” social cognition in schizophrenia: Is there distinct profiles of impairments according to negative and positive symptoms?

A single dose of oxytocin nasal spray improves higher-order social cognition in schizophrenia

Introduction. Social cognition refers to how people conceive, perceive, and draw inferences about mental and emotional states of others in the social world. Previous studies suggest that the concept of social cognition involves several abilities, including those related to affect and cognition. The present study analyses the deficits of individuals with schizophrenia in two areas of social cognition: Theory of Mind (ToM) and emotion recognition and processing. Examining the impairment of these abilities in patients with schizophrenia has the potential to elucidate the neurophysiological regions involved in social cognition and may also have the potential to aid rehabilitation. Methods. Two experiments were conducted. Both included the same five tasks: first- and second-level false-belief ToM tasks, emotion inferencing, understanding of irony, and matrix reasoning (a WAIS-R subtest). The matrix reasoning task was administered to evaluate and control for the association of the other tasks with analytic reasoning skills. Experiment 1 involved factor analysis of the task performance of 75 healthy participants. Experiment 2 compared 30 patients with schizophrenia to an equal number of matched controls. Results. (1) The five tasks were clearly divided into two factors corresponding to the two areas of social cognition, ToM and emotion recognition and processing. (2) Schizophrenics’ performance was impaired on all tasks, particularly on those loading heavily on the analytic component (matrix reasoning and second-order ToM). (3) Matrix reasoning, second-level ToM (ToM2), and irony were found to distinguish patients from controls, even when all other tasks that revealed significant impairment in the patients’ performance were taken into account. Conclusions. The two areas of social cognition examined are related to distinct factors. The mechanism for answering ToM questions (especially ToM2) depends on analytic reasoning capabilities, but the difficulties they present to individuals with schizophrenia are due to other components as well. The impairment in social cognition in schizophrenia stems from deficiencies in several mechanisms, including the ability to think analytically and to process emotion information and cues.

AimSocial cognition impacts social functioning in schizophrenia; however, little is known about how patients with schizophrenia themselves perceive social cognition. This study, using an internet survey, aimed to investigate their knowledge of social cognition, clinical experiences related to social cognition, awareness of social cognition's role in one's social life, and the relationships between subjective difficulties with social cognition and social functioning.MethodsData from 232 outpatients with schizophrenia (SZ) and 494 healthy controls (HC) were obtained through an internet survey and were weighted according to the demographics of the national population. A newly developed survey questionnaire on knowledge, experience, and awareness of social cognition was administered. Subjective difficulties were evaluated using the Self‐Assessment of Social Cognition Impairments and the Observable Social Cognition Rating Scale.ResultsLess than a quarter of both groups were familiar with the term or concept of social cognition. Less than 5% of both groups had experienced being assessed or treated for social cognition. More than half of both groups were aware of the relationship between social cognition and social functioning. The SZ group had higher levels of subjective difficulties than the HC group across all social cognitive domains. The attributional bias domain of subjective difficulties was negatively associated with social functioning.ConclusionPatients with schizophrenia had substantial subjective difficulties in social cognition, which they perceived as being related to social functioning. However, their knowledge of social cognition was limited, and the assessment and treatment might not be widespread in regular clinical practice.

Neural bases for impaired social cognition in schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders

Effect of perospirone on P300 electrophysiological activity and social cognition in schizophrenia: A three-dimensional analysis with sLORETA

Event Abstract Back to Event A pilot study: Investigating the neural correlates of social cognition in neuropsychiatric disorders using fMRI Charlotte Knee-Zaska1*, Omar Mothersill1 and Gary Donohoe1 1 NUI Galway, Psychology, Ireland Social cognition can be defined as mental processes allowing people to perceive and process information about themselves and others, enabling successful navigation of the social world (Van Overwalle, 2009). Social cognitive defects (such as emotion recognition and mental state reasoning, or ‘theory of mind’) are a core feature of several psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia (Couture et al., 2006) and strongly predict functional outcome (Fett et al., 2011). For this reason social cognition is a potential target for new pharmacological and/or cognitive treatments. A better understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms involved are a critcal step towards this. The present study aims to elucidate these mechanisms using functional MRI across a sample of psychosis patients (N = 30) and demographically-matched healthy controls (N = 30). Three robust social cognitive tasks will be used during fMRI, including (1) emotion recognition, where participants observe video clips of angry or neutral facial expressions (Grosbras and Paus, 2006), (2) theory of mind, where participants view cartoons and contemplate the mental states of the characters (Brüne et al., 2008) and (3) social exclusion, where participants experience social exclusion from a computer ball game (Sebastian et al., 2011).This study will also examine effects of putative risk factors for psychosis, including effects of genome-wide associated genetic risk variants (Ripke et al., 2011) and environmental factors. Using a single healthy volunteer, this pilot fMRI study highlighted several brain regions that were activated during each of these social cognitive tasks at a p<0.05 level, including corticolimbic and default mode networks, consistent with previous social neuroimaging studies. References Van Overwalle, F. (2009). Social cognition and the brain: a meta‐analysis.Human brain mapping, 30(3), 829-858. Couture, S. M., Penn, D. L., & Roberts, D. L. (2006). The functional significance of social cognition in schizophrenia: a review. Schizophrenia bulletin, 32(suppl 1), S44-S63. Fett, A. K. J., Viechtbauer, W., Dominguez, M. D. G., Penn, D. L., van Os, J., & Krabbendam, L. (2011). The relationship between neurocognition and social cognition with functional outcomes in schizophrenia: a meta-analysis. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 35(3), 573-588. Grosbras, M. H., & Paus, T. (2006). Brain networks involved in viewing angry hands or faces. Cerebral Cortex, 16(8), 1087-1096. Brüne, M., Lissek, S., Fuchs, N., Witthaus, H., Peters, S., Nicolas, V., ... & Tegenthoff, M. (2008). An fMRI study of theory of mind in schizophrenic patients with “passivity” symptoms. Neuropsychologia, 46(7), 1992-2001. Sebastian, C. L., Tan, G. C., Roiser, J. P., Viding, E., Dumontheil, I., & Blakemore, S. J. (2011). Developmental influences on the neural bases of responses to social rejection: implications of social neuroscience for education. Neuroimage, 57(3), 686-694. Keywords: social cognition, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Schizophrenia, theory of mind (ToM), Emotion recogntion, social exclusion Conference: Neuroscience Ireland Young Neuroscientists Symposium 2014 , Dublin, Ireland, 20 Sep - 20 Sep, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Early Career Neuroscience Citation: Knee-Zaska C, Mothersill O and Donohoe G (2014). A pilot study: Investigating the neural correlates of social cognition in neuropsychiatric disorders using fMRI . Front. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: Neuroscience Ireland Young Neuroscientists Symposium 2014 . doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2014.87.00020 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 12 Sep 2014; Published Online: 12 Sep 2014. * Correspondence: Mrs. Charlotte Knee-Zaska, NUI Galway, Psychology, Galway, Ireland, kneec@tcd.ie Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Charlotte Knee-Zaska Omar Mothersill Gary Donohoe Google Charlotte Knee-Zaska Omar Mothersill Gary Donohoe Google Scholar Charlotte Knee-Zaska Omar Mothersill Gary Donohoe PubMed Charlotte Knee-Zaska Omar Mothersill Gary Donohoe Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Investigating the state-like and trait-like characters of social cognition in schizophrenia: A short term follow-up study

Impairments in introspective accuracy (IA) are prominent among schizophrenia patients and detrimentally affect daily functioning, making IA a potential therapeutic target. Recent research highlights the role of the right rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (rlPFC) in IA and suggests that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to this region may improve it. Therefore, we tested whether applying tDCS to the right rlPFC could enhance IA for schizophrenia patients and explored the potential order/delayed effects. A randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled crossover design was used. Patients with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder (N = 40) underwent 2 tDCS sessions targeting right rlPFC (one was active stimulation and the other was sham) about a week apart. After each session, participants completed executive function and emotion recognition tasks for evaluating IA. When ignoring order effects, tDCS did not affect performance, IA, or confidence ratings across 3 tasks, except for increased confidence ratings in the cognitive task after active stimulation versus sham. However, considering order effects revealed significant interaction effects between condition and order for both task performance and IA. The group receiving active stimulation at visit 1 (Active First) generally improved over time in both cognitive and social cognitive task performance and in social cognitive IA, specifically for emotion recognition ability. In contrast, the group receiving sham stimulation at visit 1 (Sham First) showed no change in performance or IA over time. Our findings provide preliminary evidence for potential positive, but delayed, effects of tDCS in improving task performance and IA in schizophrenia.

Emotion recognition and theory of mind are related to gray matter volume of the prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a chronic, persistent, and severe mental illness characterized by deficits in cognition in addition to the well-established positive and negative symptoms. Impairment in cognition has been a keen area of research that has received a lot of attention in the last two decades. Several cognitive domains, including social cognition, are impaired in schizophrenia. Social cognition in schizophrenia is a rapidly emerging and major focus of schizophrenia research since deficits in various domains of social cognition lead to poorer outcomes and functioning. Although antipsychotic medications are effective in treating the positive and to some extent negative symptoms of schizophrenia, no pharmacological agents currently exist that are approved for treatment of impairment in social cognition associated with schizophrenia. Several studies have shown that oxytocin, a neurohormone, improves social affiliations in schizophrenia. Meta-analyses of such studies have demonstrated beneficial effect of oxytocin in the treatment of social cognitive impairments in schizophrenia in addition to having some adjunctive value in treating positive and negative symptoms. The role of oxytocin as an adjunct in the treatment of schizophrenia is based on the premise that oxytocin may have some role in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia in conjunction with several neurotransmitters. This review focuses on bringing the reader up-to-date on the subject with the main focus being on the latest research findings.

No evidence for mirror system dysfunction in schizophrenia from a multimodal TMS/EEG study

Difficulty with social interactions is a characteristic of schizophrenia. The authors used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate brain activation changes during a social cognition paradigm in patients with schizophrenia during and after an acute episode and their association with social and executive function. In a longitudinal study design, 14 patients with schizophrenia experiencing an acute episode had an fMRI scan. They returned for a follow-up scan after clinical improvement. Fourteen healthy comparison subjects were also scanned twice with approximately the same time interval between scans as in the patient group. The authors employed a social cognition fMRI paradigm involving empathic and forgivability judgments. Schizophrenia symptoms, social functioning and illness insight scales, and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test were used to examine whether improvement on these measures was associated with recovery of brain activation in response to the social cognition paradigm. After recovery from the acute episode, patients exhibited increased activation in the left medial prefrontal cortex, which was, in turn, significantly correlated with improved insight and social functioning. Decreased symptom severity and improved performance on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test were not significantly associated with increased left medial prefrontal cortex activation. This is the first study to the authors' knowledge to use a social cognition paradigm to reveal improved left medial prefrontal cortex activation in schizophrenia after recovery from an acute episode. These results suggest that restored left medial prefrontal cortex activation may mediate improvement of insight and social functioning in patients with schizophrenia.