The emotional face of anorexia nervosa: The neural correlates of emotional processing.

Social-emotional processing difficulties have been reported in Anorexia Nervosa (AN), yet the neural correlates remain unclear. Previous neuroimaging work is sparse and has not used functional connectivity paradigms to more fully explore the neural correlates of emotional difficulties. Fifty-seven acutely unwell AN (AAN) women, 60 weight-recovered AN (WR) women and 69 healthy control (HC) women categorised the gender of a series of emotional faces while undergoing Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Emotion Recognition in Face and Body Motion in Bulimia Nervosa.

Social cognition has been studied extensively in anorexia nervosa (AN), but there are few studies in bulimia nervosa (BN). This study investigated the ability of people with BN to recognise emotions in ambiguous facial expressions and in body movement. Participants were 26 women with BN, who were compared with 35 with AN, and 42 healthy controls.

Emotion Recognition in Blended Facial Expressions in Women with Anorexia Nervosa.

People with anorexia nervosa (AN) have difficulties in the social domain, and problems in the ability to recognise emotions in people's faces may contribute to these difficulties. This study aimed to investigate emotion recognition in women with AN and healthy controls (HC), using pictures of faces portraying blended emotions at different levels of ambiguity, which resemble real-life expressions more closely than prototypical expressions used in past studies. Seventy-seven participants (35 AN; 42 HC) completed the emotion recognition task.

Empathy costs: Negative emotional bias in high empathisers.

Excessive empathy has been associated with compassion fatigue in health professionals and caregivers. We investigated an effect of empathy on emotion processing in 137 healthy individuals of both sexes. We tested a hypothesis that high empathy may underlie increased sensitivity to negative emotion recognition which may interact with gender.

Exploring emotion recognition in adults and adolescents with anorexia nervosa using a body motion paradigm.

Objective: There is consistent evidence of difficulties in social cognition in adults with anorexia nervosa (AN), but less is known about adolescents. The aim of this study was to investigate the ability to recognise emotion expressed in body movement in adults and adolescents with AN.

Method: One hundred and ninety-three females participated in the study (AN = 97: 61 adults and 36 adolescents).

Perceptive biases in major depressive episode.

Introduction: Alterations in emotional processing occur during a major depressive episode (MDE), and olfaction and facial expressions have implications in emotional and social interactions. To gain a better understanding of these processes, we characterized the perceptive sensorial biases, potential links, and potential remission after antidepressant treatment of MDE.

Methods: We recruited 22 patients with acute MDE, both before and after three months of antidepressant treatment, and 41 healthy volunteers matched by age and smoking status.

Increased BOLD signal in the fusiform gyrus during implicit emotion processing in anorexia nervosa.

Background: The behavioural literature in anorexia nervosa (AN) has suggested impairments in psychosocial functioning and studies using facial expression processing tasks (FEPT) have reported poorer recognition and slower identification of emotions.

Methods: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used alongside a FEPT, depicting neutral, mildly happy and happy faces, to examine the neural correlates of implicit emotion processing in AN. Participants were instructed to specify the gender of the faces.

Dissociable brain correlates for depression, anxiety, dissociation, and somatization in depersonalization-derealization disorder.

Objective: The cerebral mechanisms of traits associated with depersonalization-derealization disorder (DPRD) remain poorly understood.

Method: Happy and sad emotion expressions were presented to DPRD and non-referred control (NC) subjects in an implicit event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) design, and correlated with self report scales reflecting typical co-morbidities of DPRD: depression, dissociation, anxiety, somatization.

Results: Significant differences between the slopes of the two groups were observed for somatization in the right temporal operculum (happy) and ventral striatum, bilaterally (sad).

Interoceptive-reflective regions differentiate alexithymia traits in depersonalization disorder.

It is unclear to what degree depersonalization disorder (DPD) and alexithymia share abnormal brain mechanisms of emotional dysregulation. We compared cerebral processing of facial expressions of emotion in individuals with DPD to normal controls (NC). We presented happy and sad emotion expressions in increasing intensities from neutral (0%) through mild (50%) to intense (100%) to DPD and non-referred NC subjects in an implicit event-related fMRI design, and correlated respective brain activations with responses on the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and its three subscales F1-F3.

Functional similarity of facial emotion processing between people with a first episode of psychosis and healthy subjects.

Background: Neurofunctional and behavioral abnormalities in facial emotion processing (FEmoP) have been consistently found in schizophrenia patients, but studies assessing brain functioning in early phases are scarce and the variety of experimental paradigms in current literature make comparisons difficult. The present work focuses on assessing FEmoP in people experiencing a psychotic episode for the first time with different experimental paradigm approaches.

Methods: Twenty-two patients with a first psychotic episode (FPe) (13 males) took part in a functional magnetic resonance imaging study (1.

COMT Val158Met × SLC6A4 5-HTTLPR interaction impacts on gray matter volume of regions supporting emotion processing.

There have been several reports on the association between the Val(158)Met genetic polymorphism of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene, as well as the serotonin transporter-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) of the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4), and frontolimbic region volumes, which have been suggested to underlie individual differences in emotion processing or susceptibility to emotional disorders. However, findings have been somewhat inconsistent. This study used diffeomorphic anatomic registration through exponentiated Lie algebra (DARTEL) whole-brain voxel-based morphometry to study the genetic effects of COMT Val(158)Met and SLC6A4 5-HTTLPR, as well as their interaction, on the regional gray matter volumes of a sample of 91 healthy volunteers.

Somatization severity associated with postero-medial complex structures.

Somatisation is a frequent problem in various psychiatric disorders, yet the cerebral mechanisms of somatisation remain unexamined. To test if somatisation is susceptible to emotional states, we investigated relationships between somatisation severity, neural effective connectivity, and autonomic responses to emotional facial expressions. Volunteering participants (N = 20) were presented with facial expressions of happy and sad emotion at three intensity levels (0%-50%-100%) in a fast implicit ER-fMRI design with concurrent derivation of skin conductance levels (SCL).

Emotion perception and functional outcome in schizophrenia: the importance of negative valence and fear.

A substantial body of work has demonstrated that persons with schizophrenia have a deficit in the perception of emotional stimuli. More recently this deficit has been linked to poor functional outcomes (FO) in this group. The current research investigated the perception of emotional stimuli in a group of 64 schizophrenia patients and 65 matched healthy controls.

Self-evaluation in schizophrenia: an fMRI study with implications for the understanding of insight.

Background: Lack of insight is a core feature of schizophrenia and is associated with structural brain abnormalities. The functional neuroanatomy of insight has only recently been investigated. When people evaluate their personality traits compared to those of another, activation is seen in central midline structures (CMS) of the brain.

Serotonin and the neural processing of facial emotions in adults with autism: an fMRI study using acute tryptophan depletion.

Context: People with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) have lifelong deficits in social behavior and differences in behavioral as well as neural responses to facial expressions of emotion. The biological basis to this is incompletely understood, but it may include differences in the role of neurotransmitters such as serotonin, which modulate facial emotion processing in health. While some individuals with ASD have significant differences in the serotonin system, to our knowledge, no one has investigated its role during facial emotion processing in adults with ASD and control subjects using acute tryptophan depletion (ATD) and functional magnetic resonance imaging.

The McCollough effect and facial emotion discrimination in patients with schizophrenia and their unaffected relatives.

Abnormalities in visual processing have been found consistently in schizophrenia patients, including deficits in early visual processing, perceptual organization, and facial emotion recognition. There is however no consensus as to whether these abnormalities represent heritable illness traits and what their contribution is to psychopathology. Fifty patients with schizophrenia, 61 of their first-degree healthy relatives, and 50 psychiatrically healthy volunteers were tested with regard to facial affect (FA) discrimination and susceptibility to develop the color-contingent illusion [the McCollough Effect (ME)].

Facial affect recognition in anorexia nervosa: is obsessionality a missing piece of the puzzle?

Objective: Socio-emotional difficulties are thought to be important maintaining factors of eating disorders. Several studies point to deficits in facial affect recognition in anorexia nervosa (AN). However, the majority of these studies fail to control for comorbidity and its effect on emotional processing.

Emerging treatments in the management of bipolar disorder - focus on risperidone long acting injection.

Bipolar disorder is a life-long psychiatric illness characterized by a high frequency of relapses and substantial societal costs. Almost half of the patients are prescribed second generation antipsychotics for treatment of manic states, or as the maintenance therapy. Risperidone long acting injection (RLAI) as a monotherapy or as adjunctive therapy to lithium or valproate for the maintenance treatment of bipolar I disorder was approved by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in United States in May 2009.

Meta-analytical comparison of voxel-based morphometry studies in obsessive-compulsive disorder vs other anxiety disorders.

Context: Whether obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is adequately classified as an anxiety disorder is a matter of considerable debate.

Objectives: To quantitatively compare structural brain changes in OCD and other anxiety disorders using novel voxel-based meta-analytical methods and to generate an online database to facilitate replication and further analyses by other researchers.

Data Sources: The PubMed, ScienceDirect, and Scopus databases were searched between 2001 (the date of the first voxel-based morphometry study in any anxiety disorder) and 2009.

Visual processing, social cognition and functional outcome in schizophrenia.

Visual processing deficits are well recognised in schizophrenia and have potentially important clinical implications. First, the pattern of deficits for different visual tasks may help understand the underlying pathophysiology of the visual dysfunction. Second, several studies report deficits correlating with functional outcomes, suggesting that outcome improvement is possible through visual remediation strategies.

Effects of acute tryptophan depletion on neural processing of facial expressions of emotion in humans.

Introduction: Acute tryptophan depletion (ATD) temporarily lowers brain serotonin (5-HT) synthesis, and behavioral studies have shown that this alters the processing of facial expressions of emotion.

Materials And Methods: The neural basis for these alterations is not known. Therefore, we employed ATD and event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine neural responses during incidental processing of fearful, happy, sad, and disgusted facial expressions.