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) (13males) took part in a functional magnetic resonance imaging study (1.5 T) examining neural responses to explicit and implicit processing of fearful and happy facial expressions presented at two different intensities: 50% and 100%. Their brain activation was compared to that of 31 healthy subjects (15 males). Results: Control subjects show differential patterns of brain activation regarding the task demands (implicit or explicit processing), the emotional content (happy or fear) and the intensities of the emotion (50% or 100%); such differences are not found in participants with a first psychotic episode (FPe). No interaction or group effects are seen between control and FPe participants with any of the emotional tasks assessed, although FPe subjects show worse behavioral performance. Conclusions: No brain areas recruited for FEmoP emerge as significantly different between people with a FPe and healthy subjects, independently on the demands of the task, the emotion processed, or the intensity of the emotion; but FPe participants show a limited recruitment of differential brain regions that could be associated with poor emotional processing in the short term. Our results outline the need of investigating the underlying processes that lead FPe participants to worse FEmoP performance. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.