Search

Objective: Schizophrenia is a complex functionally debilitating neurodevelopmental disorder, with associated social cognitive impairment. Corpus Callosum (CC) white matter tracts deficits are reported for people with schizophrenia; however, few studies focus on interhemispheric processing relative to social cognition tasks. This study aimed to determine if a relationship between the CC and social cognition exists. Method: In this cross-section study, a sample of n = 178 typical controls and n = 58 people with schizophrenia completed measures of mentalising (Reading the Mind in the Eyes), emotion recognition outcome and reaction time (Emotion Recognition Test), and clinical symptoms (Positive and Negative Symptom Scale), alongside diffusion-based tract imaging. The CC and its subregions, i.e., the genu, body, and splenium were the regions of interest (ROI). Results: Reduced white matter tract integrity was observed in the CC for patients when compared to controls. Patients performed slower, and less accurately on emotion recognition tasks, which significantly and negatively correlated to the structural integrity of the CC genu. Tract integrity further significantly and negatively related to clinical symptomatology. Conclusions: People with schizophrenia have altered white matter integrity in the genu of the CC, compared to controls, which relates to cognitive deficits associated with recognising emotional stimuli accurately and quickly, and severity of clinical symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Current treatment options for the management of depressive episodes in bipolar disorder are often sub-optimal, with some treatments either noted to be only partially effective or to require long durations of treatment prior to a therapeutic response. Therefore, pharmaco-therapeutic options that reduce depressive symptoms in a more rapid manner might provide a viable therapeutic option for some people. Intravenous (IV) scopolamine, a pan muscarinic antagonist, has been demonstrated in a number of studies to confer a rapid antidepressant effect, albeit no study to date has exclusively evaluated its potential therapeutic effect in a cohort consisting solely of individuals with bipolar disorder.Methods: Individuals with bipolar disorder who are currently experiencing a depressive episode of at least moderate severity will be included in this study. Eligible participants will undergo a screening and placebo-run in visit and will be randomised at visit 3 to the treatment or placebo group. Participants will receive the three blinded infusions over the course of 2 weeks, with two subsequent follow-up visits, 1 and 3 weeks after the last infusion visit. The total duration of the study will be approximately 6 weeks. Patients will continue their regular treatment regime in addition to study medication. Objective and subjective mood questionnaires, cognitive assessments and other psychometric instruments will be administered and recorded.Discussion: To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the antidepressant effects of IV scopolamine in an exclusively bipolar disorder cohort. Trial findings will contribute to the evidence base regarding the cholinergic hypothesis of mood disorders and specifically might result in an additional safe therapeutic option for the management of depressive episodes in bipolar disorder.Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04211961 . December 26, 2019. EudraCT Number 2017-003112-39. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study investigated associations between childhood trauma, parental bonding, and social cognition (i.e., Theory of Mind and emotion recognition) in patients with schizophrenia and healthy adults. Methods: Using cross‐sectional data, we examined the recollections of childhood trauma experiences and social cognitive abilities in 74 patients with schizophrenia and 116 healthy adults. Results: Patients had significantly higher scores compared with healthy participants on childhood trauma, and lower scores on parental bonding and social cognitive measures. Physical neglect was found to be the strongest predictor of emotion recognition impairments in both groups. Optimal parental bonding attenuated the impact of childhood trauma on emotion recognition. Conclusion: The present study provides evidence of an association between physical neglect and emotion recognition in patients with schizophrenia and healthy individuals and shows that both childhood trauma and parental bonding may influence social cognitive development. Psychosocial interventions should be developed to prevent and mitigate the long‐term effects of childhood adversities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childhood trauma, and in particular physical neglect, has been repeatedly associated with lower performance on measures of social cognition (e.g. emotion recognition tasks) in both psychiatric and non-clinical populations. The neural mechanisms underpinning this association have remained unclear. Here, we investigated whether volumetric changes in three stress-sensitive regions—the amygdala, hippocampus and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)—mediate the association between childhood trauma and emotion recognition in a healthy participant sample (N  = 112) and a clinical sample of patients with schizophrenia (N  = 46). Direct effects of childhood trauma, specifically physical neglect, on Emotion Recognition Task were observed in the whole sample. In healthy participants, reduced total and left ACC volumes were observed to fully mediate the association between both physical neglect and total childhood trauma score, and emotion recognition. No mediating effects of the hippocampus and amygdala volumes were observed for either group. These results suggest that reduced ACC volume may represent part of the mechanism by which early life adversity results in poorer social cognitive function. Confirmation of the causal basis of this association would highlight the importance of resilience-building interventions to mitigate the detrimental effects of childhood trauma on brain structure and function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: While traumatic childhood experiences have been frequently associated with adverse effects on social cognitive abilities, specifically emotion recognition, in individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) and to some degree in healthy adults also (Rokita et al., 2018), the neural mechanisms for this association remain unclear. Therefore, the main aim of this study was to explore the impact of childhood trauma on brain structures that are particularly sensitive to stress and are involved in emotion recognition processes (i.e. amygdala, hippocampus, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)) (Cancel et al., 2019). We also investigated whether volumetric changes in these brain regions mediate the association between childhood trauma and performance on an emotion recognition task. Methods: We investigated 46 patients with SZ (mean age=43.74; SD=10.94; 12 females and 34 males) and 112 healthy adults (mean age=40.13; SD=12.46; 31 females and 81 males). All participants underwent an MRI scan and completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) (Bernstein et al., 2003), which assesses the experience of trauma in childhood, including emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect and physical neglect. Emotion recognition was measured with the total score on the Emotion Recognition Task (ERT) implemented in the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) (Robbins et al., 1994). Mediation analyses were conducted to explore the direct and indirect effects of childhood trauma on emotion recognition via volumetric changes in the amygdala, hippocampus and the ACC as mediators. Results: We found that patients with SZ had significantly higher scores on physical neglect (PN; p=.018) and cumulative childhood trauma (p=.049) compared to healthy participants. Patients also had significantly smaller hippocampus (p=.001), but not amygdala (p=.453) or ACC (p=.893), and performed worse on the ERT task (p<.001), compared to the healthy group. PN was significantly negatively associated with the total score on the ERT task (r=-.321, p<.001) and a smaller volume of the left ACC (r=-.161, p=.046) in all participants. Reduced volumes of the left and entire ACC appeared to mediate the association between PN and ERT task in healthy adults (β=-1.183, SE=.687, 95% [-2.701: -.079]; β=-1.176, SE=.738, 95% [-2.872: -.0162], respectively). In the patient group, only the direct association between PN and the ERT score was significant (β= -11.657, SE=3.843, 95% CI [-19.251: -4.064], p=.003). Discussion: Our findings provide further evidence for the detrimental impact of childhood trauma, specifically physical neglect, on volumetric changes in the ACC region in both patients with SZ and healthy adults. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to show that the ACC region may be a potential neural mediator in the association between physical neglect and the ability to recognise emotions. These findings highlight the need to develop early interventions (e.g. parenting programs) in order to minimise the occurrence of childhood adversities, hence preventing from their detrimental effects on brain structure and function in both clinical and non-clinical populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]