Neural activation during emotion regulation in people with ultra-high risk for psychosis

Masters Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Medicine - Neurology, Psychiatry, Addiction, grade: 1,7, University of Groningen, language: English, abstract: Disturbances in emotion processing and regulation are a hallmark characteristic of schizophrenia, and have been shown to be present in at-risk populations. We investigated behavioral and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) differences during emotion processing and reappraisal of negative images in people at ultra-high risk (UHR) for psychosis compared to healthy controls (HC). We hypothesized that during emotion processing UHR participants will show increased activation of the ventral stream compared to HC. During reappraisal UHR were expected to show less activation of the dorsal stream compared to HC. Twelve UHR and eleven HC participated in this fMRI study in which they performed an Emotion Regulation Task. In addition, participants were asked to complete several relevant questionnaires. Brain activation during processing of negative versus neutral images did not yield significant differences between the UHR and HC, but showed a trend for increased activation in UHR participants: HC showed activation in the middle and inferior temporal gyrus, whereas the UHR group showed activation in the bilateral DLPPFC, and bilateral frontopolar cortex, the superior and inferior occipital gyrus, the cingulate gyrus, the insula and the basal ganglia. During reappraisal differences in brain activation supported our hypothesis: the UHR group showed decreased prefrontal and temporal lobe activation compared to HC. Results from the behavioral data showed that both groups were able to successfully down-regulate negative emotion. We concluded that the at-risk group showed abnormal brain activity during reappraisal that was in line with expectations, however the outcome of the behavioral results remains puzzling, and should be subjected to further study.