Face processing systems in schizophrenia spectrum disorders

描述(申请人提供)：尽管精神分裂症患者面部知觉不足，但其潜在的大脑机制和与社会功能的联系仍然知之甚少。缺乏对人脸信息的情感加工已被广泛研究。然而，可能导致面孔知觉问题的非情感性视觉和认知系统的缺陷还没有得到系统的研究。这一应用的总体假设是：1)除了情感系统外，有助于面部信息非情感处理的受损的视觉和认知系统有助于面部感知缺陷，以及2)在精神分裂症谱系中，情感和非情感面部处理缺陷在不同程度上与社会功能有关。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说。使用心理物理和神经成像方法，我们将测量患者在感知面部和非面部图像时的知觉和皮质反应。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。这些假说将通过确定视觉加工在面部信息的情感加工中的作用以及反之亦然来进一步评估。我们将测量调节视觉特征对面部情绪知觉的影响，以及调节情感特征对患者基本视觉辨别的影响。对视觉、认知和情感面孔加工系统的研究将为这些精神障碍的面孔知觉缺陷的性质提供新的见解。面孔信息的层次化组织突出表明，从视觉系统到面孔特定系统和情感系统的每个处理级别的缺陷，主要通过自下而上的机制，导致精神分裂症患者面孔依赖的社会功能问题。对面部处理系统及其与日常社交功能的关系的全面评估将为自下而上的基于过程的干预措施(如对特定面部特征的感知训练)可以重点关注的功能领域提供指示。

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.