Neuropsychology of social cognition: culture, display rules, and emotional expressivity.

Introduction: We investigated the roles of group ethnicity and display rules of emotions in the neuropsychology of social cognition in Asian American and White participants recruited from a majority-minority college campus.

Method: 128 participants (mean age = 24.9 years) completed: 1) Advanced Clinical Solutions-Social Perception (ACS-SP), which includes separate measures of affect naming of facial expressions and emotional prosody interpretation of audio statements; 2) Display Rule Assessment Inventory (DRAI), a self-report measure of emotional expressivity across four settings (family, close friends, colleagues, and strangers) and in two distinct domains (should/actual) that asks participants what they believe people should do (social value) and what they would actually do (behavioral self-report).

Exploring cultural contributions to the neuropsychology of social cognition: the advanced clinical solutions.

Introduction: Culture and social cognition are deeply intertwined, yet how this rich intersectionality is expressed neuropsychologically remains an important question.

Method: In a convenience sample of 128 young adults (mean age = 24.9 years) recruited from a majority-minority urban university, we examined performance-based neuropsychological measures of social cognition, the Advanced Clinical Solutions-Social Perception (ACS-SP), in relation to both cultural orientation, as assessed by the Individualism-Collectivism Scale (ICS) and spoken English language, as assessed by the oral word pronunciation measure of the Wide Range Achievement Test-4 (WRAT4).

College student mental health: Psychiatric risk and psychological wellbeing.

Objective: To examine both psychiatric risk and psychological wellbeing in a college student sample drawn from a majority-minority university.

Participants: 100 participants (42% White; 70 females), mean age, 21.22 years.

Spectral decomposition of resting state electroencephalogram reveals unique theta/alpha activity in schizophrenia.

Resting state electroencephalographic (EEG) activity in schizophrenia (SZ) is frequently characterised by increased power at slow frequencies and/or a reduction of peak alpha frequency. Here we investigated the nature of these effects. As most studies to date have been limited by reliance on a priori frequency bands which impose an assumed structure on the data, we performed a data-driven analysis of resting EEG recorded in SZ patients and healthy controls (HC).

Towards a Heuristic Neuropsychological Model of Adjudicative Competency.

This study sought to delineate the neuropsychological processes that undergird the psycho-legal concept of competency to stand trial (CST). Accordingly, we retrospectively examined the relationship between clinical judgments of competence or incompetence of defendants committed to a maximum-security psychiatric facility and neuropsychological measures of cognitive and social intelligence and declarative memory. Results indicated that both groups (competent and incompetent) showed similar levels of depressed cognitive intelligence with Wechsler full-scale IQ levels falling in the upper end of the borderline range.

Brain structural abnormalities of the associative striatum in adolescents and young adults at genetic high-risk of schizophrenia: Implications for illness endophenotypes.

Objective: Dysfunction in cortico-striatal circuitry represents a core component of the pathophysiology in schizophrenia (SZ) but its potential as a candidate endophenotype of the illness is often confounded by neuroleptic medication.

Methods: Accordingly, 26 adolescent and young adult participants at genetic high-risk for schizophrenia, but who were asymptomatic and neuroleptic naïve, and 28 age-matched controls underwent 1.5T structural magnetic resonance imaging of the striatum, manually parcellated into limbic (LST), associative (AST), and sensorimotor (SMST) functional subregions.

Loosening of Associations in Chronic Schizophrenia: Intersectionality of Verbal Learning, Negative Symptoms, and Brain Structure.

In 1908, Bleuler proposed a unitary theory of schizophrenia, hypothesizing a "loosening of associations" as the central mechanism underlying disturbances in thinking, motivation, and affective expression. Here, we test Bleuler's model in an archival sample of 79 healthy controls and 76 patients with chronic schizophrenia who had completed neuropsychological tests, including a measure of learning of novel word pairs, which was specifically selected to probe the structure and formation of new verbal associations. The patients also had positive and negative symptoms ratings, including measures of flat affect, anhedonia, and thought disorder.

Psychiatric risk and resilience: Plasticity genes and positive mental health.

Objective: The at-risk mental state (ARMS) for psychosis has long played a key role in diathesis-stress models of schizophrenia. More recent studies, however, have called for extending the boundaries of the ARMS construct beyond attenuated psychosis in nonhelp-seeking samples to include not only other vulnerability indicators but also protective factors related to genotype, mental health, personality, and cognition.

Method: Accordingly, we assessed in a sample of 100 college students, the ARMS construct with the Brief Prodromal Questionnaire (PQ-B) for psychosis, in conjunction with measures of positive mental health, childhood adversity, psychiatric symptoms, personality traits, social cognition, and genetic variables derived from assays of the serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) and the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).

In search of positive mental health: Personality profiles and genetic polymorphisms.

Individuals vary greatly in their mental health and these differences may play a critical role in stress resistance, risk reduction and illness recovery. Here we ask how these differences may be related to normal variation in personality and genotype. One hundred healthy college students completed measures of mental health (Mental Health Continuum-Short Form [MHC-SF]), personality (NEO Five Factor Inventory) and adverse childhood experiences.

Auditory Cortex Volume and Gamma Oscillation Abnormalities in Schizophrenia.

We investigated whether the gray matter volume of primary auditory cortex (Heschl's gyrus [HG]) was associated with abnormal patterns of auditory γ activity in schizophrenia, namely impaired γ synchronization in the 40-Hz auditory steady-state response (ASSR) and increased spontaneous broadband γ power. (The γ data were previously reported in Hirano et al, , 2015;72:813-821). Participants were 24 healthy controls (HC) and 23 individuals with chronic schizophrenia (SZ).

Real-time fMRI feedback impacts brain activation, results in auditory hallucinations reduction: Part 1: Superior temporal gyrus -Preliminary evidence.

Auditory hallucinations (AH) are one of the core symptoms of schizophrenia (SZ) and constitute a significant source of suffering and disability. One third of SZ patients experience pharmacology-resistant AH, so an alternative/complementary treatment strategy is needed to alleviate this debilitating condition. In this study, real-time functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging neurofeedback (rt-fMRI NFB), a non-invasive technique, was used to teach 10 SZ patients with pharmacology-resistant AH to modulate their brain activity in the superior temporal gyrus (STG), a key area in the neurophysiology of AH.

Orbitofrontal Sulcogyral Pattern as a Transdiagnostic Trait Marker of Early Neurodevelopment in the Social Brain.

. To systematically assess previous findings on the orbitofrontal sulcogyral pattern in psychiatric disorders and to address the utility of this pattern as a transdiagnostic trait marker of early neurodevelopment in the social brain. .

Real-time fMRI neurofeedback reduces auditory hallucinations and modulates resting state connectivity of involved brain regions: Part 2: Default mode network -preliminary evidence.

Auditory hallucinations (AHs) are one of the most distressing symptoms of schizophrenia (SZ) and are often resistant to medication. Imaging studies of individuals with SZ show hyperactivation of the default mode network (DMN) and the superior temporal gyrus (STG). Studies in SZ show DMN hyperconnectivity and reduced anticorrelation between DMN and the central executive network (CEN).

Miswiring of Frontostriatal Projections in Schizophrenia.

We investigated brain wiring in chronic schizophrenia and healthy controls in frontostriatal circuits using diffusion magnetic resonance imaging tractography in a novel way. We extracted diffusion streamlines in 27 chronic schizophrenia and 26 healthy controls connecting 4 frontal subregions to the striatum. We labeled the projection zone striatal surface voxels into 2 subtypes: dominant-input from a single cortical subregion, and, functionally integrative, with mixed-input from diverse cortical subregions.

Faulty Executive Attention and Memory Interactions in Schizophrenia: Prefrontal Gray Matter Volume and Neuropsychological Impairment.

We hypothesized that neuropsychological disturbance in schizophrenia (SZ) may reflect faulty interactions of executive attention and episodic memory, emanating, in part, from reduced prefrontal cortex (PFC) gray matter volume. Participants with SZ (n = 84) and age-matched (n = 77) controls completed both the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) and the Wechsler Memory Scale-Third Edition (WMS-III), used, respectively, as measures of executive attention and episodic memory. A subset of SZ (n = 27) and control (n = 17) groups also had available 3-T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies of the PFC.

Risk and protective effects of serotonin and BDNF genes on stress-related adult psychiatric symptoms.

We focused on individual risk by examining childhood adversity and current psychiatric symptoms in a sample of 100 college students genotyped for both the serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) and the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Naturally occurring allelic variation in 5-HTTLPR (short/long) and BDNF (valine/methionine) have been strongly implicated in stress-related psychiatric risk, but the combined effects of these alleles on psychological functioning have yet to be fully elucidated. Univariate analysis revealed gene-environment correlations linking heightened psychiatric risk with past childhood adversity for short but not long 5-HTTLPR allelic carriers and for valine (Val) but not methionine (Met) BDNF allelic carriers.

Emotion and decision-making: Induced mood influences IGT scores and deck selection strategies.

The somatic marker hypothesis (SMH) represents a rich neuropsychological framework to study emotion-based decision-making. It originates from early brain lesion studies using the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), which showed that adaptive decision-making relies on intact ventromedial prefrontal cortex for the integration of so-called "hot" affective signals and rational "cold" perceptual cognitive computations. Subsequent studies over the past 20 years have provided converging evidence for the reliability and validity of the IGT in assessing decision-making in both healthy and clinical samples, although some discrepancies remain.

Striato-nigro-striatal tract dispersion abnormalities in patients with chronic schizophrenia.

The white matter connections between the midbrain dopamine neurons and the striatum are part of a neural system involved in reward-based learning, a process that is impaired in patients with schizophrenia. The striato-nigro-striatal (SNS) tract, which participates in this process, has not as yet been explored. The present study aimed to use diffusion MRI (dMRI) to delineate the SNS tract, and to compare the application of two dMRI measures, Tract Dispersion (TD), an index of white matter morphology, and Fractional Anisotropy (FA), an index of white matter integrity, to detect group differences between patients with chronic schizophrenia (CSZ) and healthy controls (HC).

Clinical, Social, and Neuropsychological Dimensions of the Intersection of Addiction and Criminality.

To examine the social cognitive processes underlying the relationship of addiction and criminality, we administered the Addiction Severity Index-CF (ASI-CF) and the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) to 35 participants (11 women) who had been released recently from jail or prison. ASI-CF revealed highest lifetime drug use for alcohol, followed by cannabis, cocaine, and heroin, with an average of 42 lifetime arrests in this ex-offender sample. The men and the women showed similar psychiatric histories marked by depression and anxiety, but the women had more lifetime problems with thinking than did the men, who had higher lifetime problems with hallucinations.

In defense of free will: Neuroscience and criminal responsibility.

Is neuroscience the death of free will and if so, does this mean the imminent demise of the psycho-legal practices related to insanity and criminal responsibility? For many scholars of neuro-jurisprudence, recent advances in brain sciences suggesting that the perception of free will is merely illusory, an epiphenomenon of unconscious brain activity, do indeed undermine our traditional understandings of moral and legal responsibility. In this paper, however, we reject this radical claim and argue that neuroscientific evidence can indeed reveal how free will actually works and how its underlying neural and perceptual machinery gives rise to our sense of responsibility for our actions. First, the experience of free will is recast in terms of neuroscientific studies of agency and willed action.

Progressive symptom-associated prefrontal volume loss occurs in first-episode schizophrenia but not in affective psychosis.

Although smaller gray matter volumes (GMV) in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have been reported cross-sectionally, there are, to our knowledge, no reports of longitudinal comparisons using manually drawn, gyrally based ROI, and their associations with symptoms. The object of this study was to determine whether first-episode schizophrenia (FESZ) and first-episode affective psychosis (FEAFF) patients show initial and progressive PFC GMV reduction in bilateral frontal pole, superior frontal gyrus (SFG), middle frontal gyrus (MFG), and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and examine their symptom associations. Twenty-one FESZ, 24 FEAFF and 23 healthy control subjects (HC) underwent 1.

Utilizing Mutual Information Analysis to Explore the Relationship Between Gray and White Matter Structural Pathologies in Schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia has been characterized as a neurodevelopmental disorder, with structural brain abnormalities reported at all stages. However, at present, it remains unclear whether gray and white matter abnormalities represent related or independent pathologies in schizophrenia. In this study, we present findings from an integrative analysis exploring the morphological relationship between gray and white matter in 45 schizophrenia participants and 49 healthy controls.

The Genetics of Endophenotypes of Neurofunction to Understand Schizophrenia (GENUS) consortium: A collaborative cognitive and neuroimaging genetics project.

Background: Schizophrenia has a large genetic component, and the pathways from genes to illness manifestation are beginning to be identified. The Genetics of Endophenotypes of Neurofunction to Understand Schizophrenia (GENUS) Consortium aims to clarify the role of genetic variation in brain abnormalities underlying schizophrenia. This article describes the GENUS Consortium sample collection.

Reduced Structural Connectivity in Frontostriatal White Matter Tracts in the Associative Loop in Schizophrenia.

Objective: The striatum receives segregated and integrative white matter tracts from the cortex facilitating information processing in the cortico-basal ganglia network. The authors examined both types of input tracts in the striatal associative loop in chronic schizophrenia patients and healthy control subjects.

Method: Structural and diffusion MRI scans were acquired on a 3-T system from 26 chronic schizophrenia patients and 26 matched healthy control subjects.

Emotional self-other voice processing in schizophrenia and its relationship with hallucinations: ERP evidence.

Abnormalities in self-other voice processing have been observed in schizophrenia, and may underlie the experience of hallucinations. More recent studies demonstrated that these impairments are enhanced for speech stimuli with negative content. Nonetheless, few studies probed the temporal dynamics of self versus nonself speech processing in schizophrenia and, particularly, the impact of semantic valence on self-other voice discrimination.