T78. Neural Correlates of Social Attention in Schizophrenia
Year: 2019
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: BACKGROUND: Human beings are tuned for social stimuli. This tendency for individuals to prioritize processing social over nonsocial stimuli is referred to as social preference. Various lines of evidence emerging from basic science support the crucial role of social preference in the development of social cognitive skills and social functioning. It is plausible that disrupted social preference may play a role in social cognitive impairment and social dysfunction in schizophrenia. Hence, this study focused on one aspect of social preference, social cue orienting, and examined its neural correlates in schizophrenia using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). METHODS: Method: Twenty-five outpatients with DSM-5 diagnosis of schizophrenia and 25 demographically matched community controls participated in this study. To assess sensitivity to orienting to social versus nonsocial cues, a gaze cuing task was administered in the 3T scanner at UCLA. At each trial, participants were asked to indicate the location of a target (i.e., the letter X in one of two peripheral boxes) following an uninformative central cue (either social or nonsocial). There were two stimulus onset asynchronies between the cue and the target (i.e., SOA of 150 or 750 ms). It is important to note that both social and nonsocial cues were uninformative, meaning that the direction of the cue was consistent with the target location on half of the trials and inconsistent on the other half. RESULTS: Based on previous studies, we focused on two regions of interest (ROIs), the superior temporal gyrus and the inferior frontal gyrus. In the superior temporal gyrus, we did not observe any significant effect. However, in the inferior frontal gyrus, we observed a significant cue type by SOA by group interaction. At SOA 150, two group showed comparable neural activation. At SOA750, controls showed greater neural activation for social cues than nonsocial cues, whereas patients showed the opposite pattern (i.e., greater activation for nonsocial cues than social cues). DISCUSSION: Conclusions: Our study found aberrant neural activation for social cue orienting in schizophrenia patients at a long SOA, but not at a short SOA, in the inferior frontal gyrus. We did not observe any group difference in the superior temporal gyrus. Neural processes related to social cue orienting in schizophrenia may become dysfunctional when social cue orienting is less reflexive. These findings suggest differential temporal processes of social cue detection in schizophrenia when communicating with others in everyday life.
Source: Schizophrenia Bulletin
Authors: Junghee Lee, Eric Reavis, Rachel Wein, Zachary Tucker, Jasmin Humble, Michael F Green
Institution: University of California, Los Angeles
Language: English
Subfield: Psychiatry and Mental health
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2936668749