Poster Sessions

IMAG -8

Roberta Rasetti

R. Rasetti, V. S. Mattay, L. M. Wiedholz, B. S. Kolachana, A. R. Hariri, J. H. Callicott, A. Meyer-Lindenberg, D. R. Weinberger

Evidence that Altered Amygdala Activity In Schizophrenia Is Related To Clinical State And Not Genetic Risk

Objective: Although emotional dysfunction has been viewed as a cardinal feature of schizophrenia, it is unknown whether it represents a heritable phenotype related to risk for schizophrenia or whether it is a phenomenon related to disease state. A useful strategy to address this question is to study emotional responsivity in healthy siblings of patients with schizophrenia, where the deficit if heritable might be observed at least to a subtler degree. Method: For this purpose, we studied 34 patients with schizophrenia, 29 healthy siblings and 20 normal controls with Blood Oxygen Level Dependent functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (BOLD fMRI) while the participants performed an implicit facial emotion information processing task. As a control experimental, we used the N-Back working memory task, to test the heritability of previously reported working memory deficit in this study sample. Results: Patients with schizophrenia showed a deficit in amygdala reactivity to negative emotional stimuli and an alteration in the functional coupling between the amygdala and subgenual cingulate. The siblings showed a pattern that was not statistically different from normal controls. We also found a negative correlation between antipsychotic dose and coupling between amygdala and subgenual cingulate. Notably, we found an inefficient dorsolateral prefrontal cortex response in both patients with schizophrenia and their siblings confirming the heritability of working memory deficits. Conclusions: Although a deficit in face emotion processing, likely related to emotional dysfunction, is a characteristic feature of schizophrenia, our data argue that it is more likely a phenomenon related to the disease state, than to inherited risk factors for schizophrenia such as working memory deficits.