精神分裂症患者的面孔情绪知觉一直是研究者感兴趣的一个领域。脑成像研究表明，精神分裂症病人在加工情绪面孔时，一些脑区激活异常。然而，不同研究之间并未得到一致的结论。最近，心理所博士生李会杰在其导师陈楚侨研究员的带领下，完成了精神分裂症患者面孔情绪加工的元分析研究。
在最新研究中，中科院陈楚侨课题组采用了一种自动化的体素取向（voxel-wise）技术——激活可能性估计（activation likelihood estimation，ALE），为病人面孔情绪加工的脑机制研究提供了客观、量化的评估。共有17项研究，包括257个病人、241个正常控制组纳入了这项元分析。通过使用GingerALE软件，研究者获取了不同研究报告激活点的概率分布定位，并最终获得了激活可能性估计图（ALE maps）。
研究者对病人、健康控制组以及二者之间的对比等各种条件均做了单独的元分析。此外，研究者还针对内隐/外显情绪知觉任务以及慢性病人做了二级的元分析。当加工情绪面孔的时候，病人和健康控制组双侧杏仁核和右侧梭状回均得到了激活，然而，病人的激活程度普遍要小一些。与健康控制组进行直接对比的元分析发现，病人的双侧杏仁核、海马旁回、梭状回，右侧前额叶以及豆状核的激活显著减弱，而左侧脑岛只在病人群体中发现了激活。
不管在内隐还是外显情绪知觉任务中，病人的杏仁核均未得到有效激活。同时，在外显情绪知觉任务中，研究者发现梭状回的激活是存在明显差异的。专门对慢性病人进行的二级元分析也得出了类似的结果。该研究表明精神分裂症病人在加工情绪面孔时是存在显著的大脑激活异常的。在加工情绪面孔时，精神分裂症患者在杏仁核，以及更广泛的脑区，包括颞叶腹侧-基底节-前额叶皮质构成的“社会脑”系统激活显著弱于控制组。上述神经环路的激活异常，可能是病人加工情绪面孔存在困难的主要原因。为了改善病人的生活技能，陈楚侨课题组拟打算对导致病人加工静态社会刺激异常的神经环路进行深入研究。
该项工作受到了心理所百人计划启动经费、中国科学院知识创新工程重要方向性项目、国家自然科学基金及973国家重点基础研究发展计划的资助。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原始出处：
Schizophrenia Bulletin, doi:10.1093/schbul/sbn190
Facial Emotion Processing in Schizophrenia: A Meta-analysis of Functional Neuroimaging Data
Huijie Li24, Raymond C.K. Chan13,5, Grainne M. McAlonan5,6 and Qi-yong Gong7
2 Neuropsychology and Applied Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory
3 Key Laboratory of Mental Health
4 Graduate School, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
5 Department of Psychiatry
6 State Key Laboratory for Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China
7 Huaxi MR Research Centre, Department of Radiology, West China Hospital/West China School of Medicine, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
Background: People with schizophrenia have difficulty with emotion perception. Functional imaging studies indicate regional brain activation abnormalities in patients with schizophrenia when processing facial emotion. However, findings have not been entirely consistent across different studies. Methods: Activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analyses were conducted to examine brain activation during facial emotion processing in patients with schizophrenia, controls, and patients compared with controls. Secondary meta-analyses were performed to assess the contribution of task design and illness chronicity to the results reported. Results: When processing facial expressions of emotions, both patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls activated the bilateral amygdala and right fusiform gyri. However, the extent of activation in these regions was generally much more limited in the schizophrenia samples. When directly compared with controls, the extent of activation in bilateral amygdala, parahippocampal gyrus and fusiform gyrus, right superior frontal gyrus, and lentiform nucleus was significantly less in patients. Patients with schizophrenia, but not controls, activated the left insula. A relative failure to recruit the amygdala in patients occurred regardless of whether the task design was explicit or implicit, while differences in fusiform activation were evident in explicit, not implicit, tasks. Restricting the analysis to patients with chronic illness did not substantially change the results. Conclusions: A marked underrecruitment of the amygdala, accompanied by a substantial limitation in activation throughout a ventral temporal-basal ganglia-prefrontal cortex "social brain" system may be central to the difficulties patients experience when processing facial emotion.
