Relationship between mismatch negativity and facial emotion recognition in patients with schizophrenia

Abstract

Background: Mismatch negativity (MMN) is an event-related potential that is closely related with the psychopathology of schizophrenia. Recently, MMN has been reported to be associated with social perception, a domain of social cognition. Social cognition is crucial for predicting social functioning in patients with schizophrenia. Facial emotion recognition is an important domain of social cognition. In the present study, facial emotion recognition and MMN were examined, and the relationship between them was explored in patients with schizophrenia vs. control subjects. Methods: Twenty patients with schizophrenia and 19 control subjects participated. The facial emotion recognition test consisted of a baseline condition, happy background condition, and fear background condition. In the background conditions, target facial stimuli were presented on happy or fear background faces. In the baseline condition, target faces were presented on a blank screen. Including both background and baseline conditions can provide information about the interaction between emotions. Sensitivity (d-prime) was calculated, and reaction time was measured. To make attention allocated to auditory stimuli different, the following 3 MMN conditions were employed: video condition, continuous performance test condition, and auditory target detection condition. Amplitude and latency were measured. The correlations between MMN and facial emotion recognition were analyzed.Results: Facial emotion recognition was more influenced by background emotion in patients with schizophrenia. Interactions between emotions were found and were different between groups. A subtle influence of attention on MMN was found in both groups. Different MMN waveforms were obtained, depending on deviant type and attention. Unlike control subjects, patients with schizophrenia showed significant correlations between MMN to duration deviant in the video condition and d-prime for fear target in the fear background condition, between MMN to duration deviant in the CPT condition and d-primes for neutral and fear targets in the fear background condition, and between MMN to white noise deviant in the CPT condition and d-prime for happy target in the happy background condition. Conclusion: This study addressed the relationship between MMN and facial emotion recognition. The association between MMN and social perception, a domain of social cognition, was previously reported. The present study extended those findings to the relationship with facial emotion recognition, another domain of social cognition. These findings suggest that deficits in early perceptual processing may have downstream consequences on higher-order social cognition.