Corrigendum: The Influence of Task-Irrelevant Flankers Depends on the Composition of Emotion Categories

Face recognition usually takes place in a social context, where faces are surrounded by other stimuli. These can act as distracting flankers which impair recognition. Previous work has suggested that flankers expressing negative emotions distract more than positive ones. However, the various negative emotions differ in their relative impact and it is unclear whether all negative emotions are equally distracting. We investigated the impact of three negative (angry, fearful, sad) and one positive (happy) facial flanker conditions on target recognition in an emotion discrimination task. We examined the effect of the receiver’s gender, and the impact of two different temporal delays between flanker and target onset, as stimulus onset asynchrony is assumed to affect distractor strength. Participants identified and rated the emotional intensity of target faces surrounded by either face (emotional and neutral) or non-face flankers. Target faces were presented either simultaneously with the flankers, or delayed by 300 ms. Contrary to our hypothesis, negative flankers did not exert stronger distraction effects than positive or neutral flankers. However, happy flankers reduced recognition performance. Results of a follow-up experiment with a balanced number of emotion categories (one positive, one negative and one neutral flanker condition) suggest that the distraction effect of emotional flankers depends on the composition of the emotion categories. Additionally, congruency effects were found to be valence-specific and overruled by threat stimuli. Females responded more quickly and rated targets in happy flankers as less intense. This indicates a gender difference in emotion processing, with greater sensitivity to facial flankers in women. Targets were rated as more intense when they were presented without a temporal delay, possibly due to a stronger flanker contrast. These three experiments show that an exceptional processing of threat-related flanker stimuli depends on emotion category composition, which should be considered a mediating factor when examining emotional context effects

Emotional Graphic Cigarette Warning Labels Reduce the Electrophysiological Brain Response to Smoking Cues

There is an ongoing public debate about the new graphic warning labels (GWLs) that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposes to place on cigarette packs. Tobacco companies argued that the strongly emotional images FDA proposed to include in the GWLs encroached on their constitutional rights. The court ruled that FDA did not provide sufficient scientific evidence of compelling public interest in such encroachment. This study\u27s objectives were to examine the effects of the GWLs on the electrophysiological and behavioral correlates of smoking addiction and to determine whether labels rated higher on the emotional reaction (ER) scale are associated with greater effects. We studied 25 non-treatment-seeking smokers. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants viewed a random sequence of paired images, in which visual smoking (Cues) or non-smoking (non-Cues) images were preceded by GWLs or neutral images. Participants reported their cigarette craving after viewing each pair. Dependent variables were magnitude of P300 ERPs and self-reported cigarette craving in response to Cues. We found that subjective craving response to Cues was significantly reduced by preceding GWLs, whereas the P300 amplitude response to Cues was reduced only by preceding GWLs rated high on the ER scale. In conclusion, our study provides experimental neuroscience evidence that weighs in on the ongoing public and legal debate about how to balance the constitutional and public health aspects of the FDA-proposed GWLs. The high toll of smoking-related illness and death adds urgency to the debate and prompts consideration of our findings while longitudinal studies of GWLs are underway

Memory-delineated subtypes of schizophrenia: Relationship to clinical, neuroanatomical, and neurophysiological measures.

Memory performance was examined in patients with schizophrenia to determine whether subgroups conforming to cortical and subcortical dementias could be identified and, if so, whether subgroups differed on clinical, neuroanatomical, and neurophysiological measures. A cluster analysis of California Verbal Learning Test performance classified patients into 3 subgroups. Two groups exhibited memory deficits consistent with the cortical–subcortical distinction, whereas 1 group was unimpaired. Cortical patients tended to be male, and they had earlier illness onset, reduced temporal lobe gray matter, and hypometabolism. Subcortical patients had ventricular enlargement and more negative symptoms. Unimpaired patients had fewer negative symptoms and dorsal medial prefrontal hypermetabolism. The authors con-clude that categorizing patients on the basis of memory deficits may yield neurobiologically meaningful disease subtypes. There is increasing consensus that Kraepelin’s conceptu-alization of schizophrenia as a disorder characterized by disturbed cognition rather than psychotic symptomatology was fundamentally correct (see Sharma & Harvey, 2000, fo

Striatal intrinsic reinforcement signals during recognition memory: relationship to response bias and dysregulation in schizophrenia

Ventral striatum (VS) is a critical brain region for reinforcement learning and motivation, and VS hypofunction is implicated in psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia. Providing rewards or performance feedback has been shown to activate VS. Intrinsically motivated subjects performing challenging cognitive tasks are likely to engage reinforcement circuitry even in the absence of external feedback or incentives. However, such intrinsic reinforcement responses have received little attention, have not been examined in relation to behavioral performance, and have not been evaluated for impairment in neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia. Here we used fMRI to examine a challenging “old” vs. “new” visual recognition task in healthy subjects and patients with schizophrenia. Targets were unique fractal stimuli previously presented as salient distractors in a visual oddball task, producing incidental memory encoding. Based on the prediction error theory of reinforcement learning, we hypothesized that correct target recognition would activate VS in controls, and that this activation would be greater in subjects with lower expectation of responding correctly as indexed by a more conservative response bias. We also predicted these effects would be reduced in patients with schizophrenia. Consistent with these predictions, controls activated VS and other reinforcement processing regions during correct recognition, with greater VS activation in those with a more conservative response bias. Patients did not show either effect, with significant group differences suggesting hyporesponsivity in patients to internally generated feedback. These findings highlight the importance of accounting for intrinsic motivation and reward when studying cognitive tasks, and add to growing evidence of reward circuit dysfunction in schizophrenia that may impact cognition and function

Processing of spatial-frequency altered faces in schizophrenia: Effects of illness phase and duration

Low spatial frequency (SF) processing has been shown to be impaired in people with schizophrenia, but it is not clear how this varies with clinical state or illness chronicity. We compared schizophrenia patients (SCZ, n534), first episode psychosis patients (FEP, n522), and healthy controls (CON, n535) on a gender/facial discrimination task. Images were either unaltered (broadband spatial frequency, BSF), or had high or low SF information removed (LSF and HSF conditions, respectively). The task was performed at hospital admission and discharge for patients, and at corresponding time points for controls. Groups were matched on visual acuity. At admission, compared to their BSF performance, each group was significantly worse with low SF stimuli, and most impaired with high SF stimuli. The level of impairment at each SF did not depend on group. At discharge, the SCZ group performed more poorly in the LSF condition than the other groups, and showed the greatest degree of performance decline collapsed over HSF and LSF conditions, although the latter finding was not significant when controlling for visual acuity. Performance did not change significantly over time for any group. HSF processing was strongly related to visual acuity at both time points for all groups. We conclude the following: 1) SF processing abilities in schizophrenia are relatively stable across clinical state; 2) face processing abnormalities in SCZ are not secondary to problems processing specific SFs, but are due to other known difficulties constructing visual representations from degraded information; and 3) the relationship between HSF processing and visual acuity, along with known SCZ- and medication-related acuity reductions, and the elimination of a SCZ-related impairment after controlling for visual acuity in this study, all raise the possibility that some prior findings of impaired perception in SCZ may be secondary to acuity reductions

Accelerating Medicines Partnership® Schizophrenia (AMP® SCZ): Rationale and Study Design of the Largest Global Prospective Cohort Study of Clinical High Risk for Psychosis

This article describes the rationale, aims, and methodology of the Accelerating Medicines Partnership® Schizophrenia (AMP® SCZ). This is the largest international collaboration to date that will develop algorithms to predict trajectories and outcomes of individuals at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis and to advance the development and use of novel pharmacological interventions for CHR individuals. We present a description of the participating research networks and the data processing analysis and coordination center, their processes for data harmonization across 43 sites from 13 participating countries (recruitment across North America, Australia, Europe, Asia, and South America), data flow and quality assessment processes, data analyses, and the transfer of data to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Data Archive (NDA) for use by the research community. In an expected sample of approximately 2000 CHR individuals and 640 matched healthy controls, AMP SCZ will collect clinical, environmental, and cognitive data along with multimodal biomarkers, including neuroimaging, electrophysiology, fluid biospecimens, speech and facial expression samples, novel measures derived from digital health technologies including smartphone-based daily surveys, and passive sensing as well as actigraphy. The study will investigate a range of clinical outcomes over a 2-year period, including transition to psychosis, remission or persistence of CHR status, attenuated positive symptoms, persistent negative symptoms, mood and anxiety symptoms, and psychosocial functioning. The global reach of AMP SCZ and its harmonized innovative methods promise to catalyze the development of new treatments to address critical unmet clinical and public health needs in CHR individuals

Mapping genomic loci implicates genes and synaptic biology in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia has a heritability of 60-80%1, much of which is attributable to common risk alleles. Here, in a two-stage genome-wide association study of up to 76,755 individuals with schizophrenia and 243,649 control individuals, we report common variant associations at 287 distinct genomic loci. Associations were concentrated in genes that are expressed in excitatory and inhibitory neurons of the central nervous system, but not in other tissues or cell types. Using fine-mapping and functional genomic data, we identify 120 genes (106 protein-coding) that are likely to underpin associations at some of these loci, including 16 genes with credible causal non-synonymous or untranslated region variation. We also implicate fundamental processes related to neuronal function, including synaptic organization, differentiation and transmission. Fine-mapped candidates were enriched for genes associated with rare disruptive coding variants in people with schizophrenia, including the glutamate receptor subunit GRIN2A and transcription factor SP4, and were also enriched for genes implicated by such variants in neurodevelopmental disorders. We identify biological processes relevant to schizophrenia pathophysiology; show convergence of common and rare variant associations in schizophrenia and neurodevelopmental disorders; and provide a resource of prioritized genes and variants to advance mechanistic studies

Mapping genomic loci prioritises genes and implicates synaptic biology in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia has a heritability of 60–80%1, much of which is attributable to common risk alleles. Here, in a two-stage genome-wide association study of up to 76,755 individuals with schizophrenia and 243,649 control individuals, we report common variant associations at 287 distinct genomic loci. Associations were concentrated in genes that are expressed in excitatory and inhibitory neurons of the central nervous system, but not in other tissues or cell types. Using fine-mapping and functional genomic data, we identify 120 genes (106 protein-coding) that are likely to underpin associations at some of these loci, including 16 genes with credible causal non-synonymous or untranslated region variation. We also implicate fundamental processes related to neuronal function, including synaptic organization, differentiation and transmission. Fine-mapped candidates were enriched for genes associated with rare disruptive coding variants in people with schizophrenia, including the glutamate receptor subunit GRIN2A and transcription factor SP4, and were also enriched for genes implicated by such variants in neurodevelopmental disorders. We identify biological processes relevant to schizophrenia pathophysiology; show convergence of common and rare variant associations in schizophrenia and neurodevelopmental disorders; and provide a resource of prioritized genes and variants to advance mechanistic studies