Face processing systems in schizophrenia spectrum disorders

描述（由申请人提供）：虽然在精神分裂症中已经证明了缺乏面部感知，但其潜在的大脑机制及其与社会功能的联系仍然知之甚少。缺乏情感处理的人脸信息已被广泛研究。然而，非情感视觉和认知系统的缺陷可能导致面部感知问题，但尚未得到系统的研究。该应用的总体假设是：1)除了情感系统之外，为面部信息的非情感处理服务的视觉和认知系统受损也导致了面部感知缺陷；2)情感和非情感面部处理缺陷与精神分裂症谱系中不同程度的社会功能相关。我们将首先通过研究精神分裂症和分裂情感障碍中专门处理面部信息的视觉和认知系统的功能特性来评估这些假设。使用心理物理和神经成像方法，我们将测量患者感知人脸和非人脸图像时的感知和皮层反应。这些非情感评估将与患者在执行情绪感知任务时获得的情感评估进行比较。这些假设将通过确定视觉处理在面部信息情感处理中的作用来进一步评估，反之亦然。我们将测量调节视觉特征对面部情绪感知的影响，以及调节情感特征对患者基本视觉辨别的影响。对视觉、认知和情感面部处理系统的研究将为这些精神障碍中面部感知缺陷的本质提供新的见解。面部信息的分层组织强调，从视觉系统到面部特定系统和情感系统，每个加工水平的缺陷主要通过自下而上的机制导致精神分裂症中依赖面部的社会功能问题。对面部处理系统及其与日常社会功能的关系的全面评估将为基于自下而上过程的干预（如特定面部特征的感知训练）的功能领域提供指针。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Although deficient face perception has been demonstrated in schizophrenia, its underlying brain mechanism and the link to social functioning remain poorly understood. Deficient affective processing of face information has been extensively studied. However, deficits in the non-affective visual and cognitive systems, which may contribute to the face perception problem, have not been systematically investigated. The overall hypotheses of this application are 1) in addition to the affective system, the compromised visual and cognitive systems that subserve the non-affective processing of face information contributes to the face perception deficit, and 2) deficient affective and non-affective facial processing is associated with social functioning to varying degrees in the schizophrenia spectrum. We will evaluate these hypotheses first by investigating the functional properties of the visual and cognitive systems specialized for processing face information in schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. Using psychophysical and neuroimaging approaches, we will measure the perceptual and cortical responses while patients perceive face and non-face images. These non-affective assessments will be compared with the affective assessments acquired while the patients perform emotion perception tasks. The hypotheses will be evaluated further by determining the roles of visual processing in affective processing of face information and vice versa. We will measure the effects of modulating visual features on facial emotion perception as well as the effects of modulating affective features on basic visual discrimination in patients. The investigation of the visual, cognitive and affective face processing systems will provide new insights about the nature of face perception deficits in these mental disorders. Hierarchical organization of face information highlights that deficits in each processing level, from the visual system to the face-specific system and to the affective system, contribute to face-dependent social functioning problems in schizophrenia, primarily through bottom-up mechanisms. The comprehensive assessments of the face processing systems and their relationships with daily social functioning will provide pointers to the functional domains that bottom-up process based interventions such as perceptual training of specific facial features can focus upon.