Anhedonia is associated with reward-processing deficits of the dopamine system, which may increase the risk of depression. Nevertheless, few previous studies have examined the influence of hedonic ...tone on event-related potential (ERP) measures of reward processing in major depressive disorder. A simple gambling task was used to elicit feedback negativity (FN), an ERP component elicited by feedback indicating gain versus loss, in 27 patients with major depression and 27 healthy participants. We found that participants with depression were characterized by reduced FN responses, especially towards monetary gains, but not losses, compared with healthy individuals. In addition, the amplitude of FN to gain feedback in participants with depression was related to anhedonia severity and depressive symptoms. These findings indicate an association between low hedonic capacity and reduction in FN. As a neural measure of reward sensitivity, FN may be generated in part by reward-related activity.
•Depressed patients demonstrated reduced feedback negativity (FN).•The FN amplitude to gain in depressed patients was related to anhedonia severity and depressive symptoms.•Trait anhedonia may exert a direct influence on the neutral activities to feedback processing.
Abstract Anhedonia is a hallmark symptom of major depressive disorder (MDD). Preliminary findings suggest that anhedonia is characterized by reduced reward anticipation and motivation of obtaining ...reward. However, relatively little is known about reward-based decision-making in depression. We tested the hypothesis that anhedonia in MDD may reflect specific impairments in motivation on reward-based decision-making and the deficits might be associated with depressive symptoms severity. In study 1, individuals with and without depressive symptoms performed the modified version of the Effort Expenditure for Rewards Task (EEfRT), a behavioral measure of cost/benefit decision-making. In study 2, MDD patients, remitted MDD patients and healthy controls were recruited for the same procedures. We found evidence for decreased willingness to make effort for rewards among individuals with subsyndromal depression; the effect was amplified in MDD patients, but dissipated in patients with remitted depression. We also found that reduced anticipatory and consummatory pleasure predicted decreased willingness to expend efforts to obtain rewards in MDD patients. For individuals with subsyndromal depression, the impairments were correlated with anticipatory anhedonia but not consummatory anhedonia. These data offer novel evidence that motivational deficits in MDD are correlated with depression severity and predicted by self-reported anhedonia.
Abstract Research into facial emotion perception in schizophrenia has burgeoned over the past several decades. The evidence is mixed regarding whether patients with schizophrenia have a general ...facial emotion perception deficit (a deficit in facial emotion perception plus a more basic deficit in facial processing) or specific facial emotion perception deficits (deficits only in facial emotion perception tasks). A meta-analysis is conducted of 28 facial emotion perception studies that include control tasks. These studies use differential deficit designs to examine whether patients with schizophrenia demonstrate a general deficit or specific deficit in facial emotion perception. A significant mean effect size is found for total facial emotion perception ( d = − 0.85). Patients with schizophrenia demonstrate impaired ability to perform corresponding control tasks, and the mean effect size is − 0.70. The current findings suggest that patients with schizophrenia have moderately to severely impaired perception of facial emotion.
Abstract This study sought to determine the moderators in the treatment effect of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) on negative symptoms in schizophrenia. We performed a ...meta-analysis of prospective studies on the therapeutic application of rTMS in schizophrenia assessing the effects of both low-frequency and high-frequency rTMS on negative symptoms. Results indicate that rTMS is effective in alleviating negative symptoms in schizophrenia. The effect size was moderate (0.63 and 0.53, respectively). The effect size of rTMS on negative symptoms in sham-controlled trials was 0.80 as measured by the SANS and 0.41 as measured by the PANSS. A longer duration of illness was associated with poorer efficacy of rTMS on negative symptoms. A 10 Hz setting, at least 3 consecutive weeks of treatment, treatment site at the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and a 110% motor threshold (MT) were found to be the best rTMS parameters for the treatment of negative symptoms. The results of our meta-analysis suggest that rTMS is an effective treatment option for negative symptoms in schizophrenia. The moderators of rTMS on negative symptoms included duration of illness, stimulus frequency, duration of illness, position and intensity of treatment as well as the type of outcome measures used.
•Multisensory temporal dysfunction represented by an extended temporal binding window is a common feature of ASD and SSD.•Unisensory temporal acuity is impaired in schizophrenia but may be spared in ...ASD.•Multisensory dysfunction is associated with incoherent perception and communicative deficit that characterize SSD and ASD.
Multisensory temporal integration could be compromised in both autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) and may play an important role in perceptual and cognitive impairment in these two disorders. This review aimed to quantitatively compare the sensory temporal acuity between healthy controls and the two clinical groups (ASD and SSD). Impairment of sensory temporal integration was robust and comparable in both patients with SSD (Hedges’ g = 0.91, 95%CI0.62–1.19; Z = 6.21, p < .001) and ASD (Hedges’ g = 0.85, (95%CI0.54–1.15; Z = 5.39, p < .001). By further separating studies into unisensory and multisensory (bimodal: audiovisual) ones, subgroup analysis indicated heterogeneous and unstable effects for unisensory temporal binding in the ASD group, but a more consistent and severe impairment in multisensory temporal integration represented by an enlarged temporal binding window in both clinical groups. Such multisensory dysfunction is associated with symptoms like hallucinations and impaired social communications. Future studies focusing on improving multisensory temporal functions may have important implications for the amelioration of schizophrenia and autistic symptoms.
Neurological soft signs (NSS) are associated with schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders. NSS have been conventionally considered as clinical neurological signs without localized brain ...regions. However, recent brain imaging studies suggest that NSS are partly localizable and may be associated with deficits in specific brain areas.
We conducted an activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis to quantitatively review structural and functional imaging studies that evaluated the brain correlates of NSS in patients with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. Six structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) and 15 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies were included.
The results from meta-analysis of the sMRI studies indicated that NSS were associated with atrophy of the precentral gyrus, the cerebellum, the inferior frontal gyrus, and the thalamus. The results from meta-analysis of the fMRI studies demonstrated that the NSS-related task was significantly associated with altered brain activation in the inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral putamen, the cerebellum, and the superior temporal gyrus.
Our findings from both sMRI and fMRI meta-analyses further support the conceptualization of NSS as a manifestation of the "cerebello-thalamo-prefrontal" brain network model of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders.
To integrate auditory and visual signals into a unified percept, the paired stimuli must co-occur within a limited time window known as the Temporal Binding Window (TBW). The width of the TBW, a ...proxy of audiovisual temporal integration ability, has been found to be correlated with higher-order cognitive and social functions. A comprehensive review of studies investigating audiovisual TBW reveals several findings: (1) a wide range of top-down processes and bottom-up features can modulate the width of the TBW, facilitating adaptation to the changing and multisensory external environment; (2) a large-scale brain network works in coordination to ensure successful detection of audiovisual (a)synchrony; (3) developmentally, audiovisual TBW follows a U-shaped pattern across the lifespan, with a protracted developmental course into late adolescence and rebounding in size again in late life; (4) an enlarged TBW is characteristic of a number of neurodevelopmental disorders; and (5) the TBW is highly flexible via perceptual and musical training. Interventions targeting the TBW may be able to improve multisensory function and ameliorate social communicative symptoms in clinical populations.
•Asynchronous and synchronous audiovisual perception are correlated with different brain networks.•The width of the TBW is modulated by both top-down and bottom-up factors.•The width of the TBW follows a U-shaped developmental trajectory across the lifespan.•Atypical TBW is a shared characteristic of different neurodevelopmental disorders.•Perceptual and musical training may be able to narrow the audiovisual TBW.
Objective: Pleasure is essential to normal healthy life. Olfaction, as 1 of the neurobehavioral probes of hedonic capacity, has a unique advantage compared to other sensory modalities. However, it is ...unclear how olfactory hedonic information is processed in the brain. This study aimed to investigate olfactory hedonic processing in the human brain. Method: We conducted an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis on 16 functional imaging studies that examined brain activation in olfactory hedonic processing-related tasks in healthy adults. Results: The results show that there is a core olfactory hedonic processing network, which consists of the bilateral parahippocampal gyrus/amygdala (BA34), the left middle frontal gyrus (BA6), the right middle frontal gyrus/lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC; BA10), the bilateral cingulate gyrus (BA32), the right lentiform nucleus/lateral globus pallidus, the right medial frontal gyrus/medial OFC (BA11), the left superior frontal gyrus (BA10), and the right insula (BA13). Moreover, our findings highlight that the right hemisphere is predominant in explicit odor hedonic judgment. Finally, the results indicate that there are significant differences in brain activation for hedonic judgment and passive smelling. Conclusion: These results support the hypothesis that the OFC plays a key role in explicit hedonic judgment.
Atypical sensory processing has recently gained much research interest as a key domain of autistic symptoms. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit difficulties in processing the ...temporal aspects of sensory inputs, and show altered behavioural responses to sensory stimuli (i.e., sensory responsiveness). The present study examined the relation between sensory responsiveness (assessed by the Adult/Adolescent Sensory Profile) and audiovisual temporal integration (measured by unisensory temporal order judgement (TOJ) tasks and audiovisual simultaneity judgement (SJ) tasks) in typically-developing adolescents (
n
= 94). We found that adolescents with higher levels of autistic traits exhibited more difficulties in separating visual stimuli in time (i.e., larger visual TOJ threshold) and showed a stronger bias to perceive sound-leading audiovisual pairings as simultaneous. Regarding the associations between different measures of sensory function, reduced visual temporal acuity, but not auditory or multisensory temporal processing, was significantly correlated with more atypical patterns of sensory responsiveness. Furthermore, the positive correlation between visual TOJ thresholds and sensory avoidance was only found in adolescents with relatively high levels of autistic traits, but not in those with relatively low levels of autistic traits. These findings suggest that reduced visual temporal acuity may contribute to altered sensory experiences and may be linked to broader behavioural characteristics of ASD.
Theoretically semantic processing can be separated into early automatic semantic activation and late contextualization. Semantic processing deficits have been suggested in patients with ...schizophrenia, however it is not clear which stage of semantic processing is impaired. We attempted to clarify this issue by conducting a meta-analysis of the N400 component.
Twenty-one studies met the inclusion criteria for the meta-analysis procedure. The Comprehensive Meta-Analysis software package was used to compute pooled effect sizes and homogeneity.
Studies favoring early automatic activation produced a significant effect size of -0.41 for the N400 effect. Studies favoring late contextualization generated a significant effect size of -0.36 for the N400 effect, a significant effect size of -0.52 for N400 for congruent/related target words, and a significant effect size of 0.82 for the N400 peak latency.
These findings suggest the automatic spreading activation process in patients with schizophrenia is very similar for closely related concepts and weakly or remotely related concepts, while late contextualization may be associated with impairments in processing semantically congruent context accompanied by slow processing speed.
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