Pj. Johnston et al., A generalised deficit can account for problems in facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia, BIOL PSYCH, 58(3), 2001, pp. 203-227
Neuroimaging research has shown localised brain activation to different fac
ial expressions. This. along with the finding that schizophrenia patients p
erform poorly in their recognition of negative emotions. has raised the sug
gestion that patients display an emotion specific impairment. We propose th
at this asymmetry in performance reflects task difficulty gradations. rathe
r than aberrant processing in neural pathways subserving recognition of spe
cific emotions, A neural network model is presented, which classifies facia
l expressions on the basis of measurements derived from human faces. After
training. the network showed an accuracy pattern closely resembling that of
healthy subjects. Lesioning of the network led to an overall decrease in t
he network's discriminant capacity, with the greatest accuracy decrease to
fear. disgust and anger stimuli. This implies that the differential pattern
of impairment in schizophrenia patients can be explained without having to
Postulate impairment or specific processing modules for negative emotion r
ecognition. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.