Abstract
When primates passively observe other subjects perform specific gestures or actions, premotor and motor cortical areas involved in the internal representation and actual execution of those actions exhibit neuronal activation. This mirror mechanism matches observation, representation, and execution, facilitating internal motor rehearsal, imitation, recognition of actions by others and their meanings, and social learning. Schizophrenic patients have deficits in processing affect displayed by other people's faces, which likely relates to the poor social adaptation and functioning seen in the condition. We hypothesized that, when correctly performing working-memory tasks requiring facial affect processing, schizophrenic patients would show relative increased activity in brain areas involved in social learning and in the internal representation of facial expressions when compared to controls. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging in schizophrenic patients and normal controls to detect relative changes of blood flow in cortical areas related to the representation of facial expressions while the subjects performed simple working-memory tasks with facial emotion diagrams or color circles as cues. We found that, when the task cues were facial expressions in contrast to color circles, the schizophrenic group exhibited increased activation of the face movement areas in motor and pre-motor cortex.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Dr. A. Kopelowicz (San Fernando Mental Health Center, Los Angeles Department of Mental Health) and Drs. W. Wirshing, D. Ames-Wirshing, and Scott Saunders (Schizophrenic Research Clinic, West Los Angeles VA Health Care Center) for generously agreeing to the recruitment of subjects from their respective clinics. We also thank Dr. Marco Iacoboni for his generosity and his time in reviewing the manuscript; his suggestions are greatly appreciated. Supported by a Department of Veteran Affairs (Office of Research and Development, Medical Research Service) Advanced Research Scientist Career Development Award, and by a NARSAD Staglin Young Investigator Award to J.Q., as well as by contributions from the VA's VISN-22 MIRECC, the Brain Mapping Medical Research Organization, the Brain Mapping Support Foundation, the Pierson-Lovelace Foundation, the Ahmanson Foundation, the Tamkim Foundation, the Jennifer-Jones Simon Foundation, the Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation, the Robson Family, the Northstar Fund, and a National Center for Research Resources grant RR12169.
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Quintana, J., Davidson, T., Kovalik, E. et al. A Compensatory Mirror Cortical Mechanism for Facial Affect Processing in Schizophrenia. Neuropsychopharmacol 25, 915–924 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0893-133X(01)00304-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0893-133X(01)00304-9
