Angry but not neutral faces facilitate response inhibition in schizophrenia patients.

Angry but not neutral faces facilitate response inhibition in schizophrenia patients. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2016 Nov 19; Authors: Derntl B, Habel U Abstract Schizophrenia is a very heterogeneous disorder with extensive impairments in cognitive as well as emotional abilities. One critical domain is response inhibition, and previous studies in schizophrenia patients have mostly observed impairments, i.e., slower inhibition. Moreover, response inhibition to socially salient stimuli has not been investigated in schizophrenia so far. Therefore, to elucidate emotion-cognition interactions by examining potential emotional effects on inhibition processes and further investigate the association of cognition with inhibition we used an emotional stop signal task in 27 schizophrenia patients and 27 gender- and age-matched controls. Task irrelevant emotional faces (angry and neutral) were used as stimuli in a stop signal reaction time task. Regarding accuracy, patients showed significantly worse performance in neutral trials, while their performance in anger trials (stop and go) was similar to controls. Angry faces elicited faster response inhibition in both groups, underlining an emotional facilitation effect. Neurocognitive functions significantly correlated with accuracy in the stop signal task in schizophrenia patients, thus further strengthening the notion of the strong link between cognitive abilities and inhibition processes. ...
Source: European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience - Category: Psychiatry Tags: Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci Source Type: research