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. 2007 Aug:191:126-30.
doi: 10.1192/bjp.bp.106.028829.

Emotion recognition and genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia

Benoit Bediou  1 , Fatima Asri, Jerome Brunelin, Pierre Krolak-Salmon, Thierry D'Amato, Mohamed Saoud, Imane Tazi
Affiliations

Emotion recognition and genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia

Benoit Bediou et al. Br J Psychiatry. 2007 Aug.

Abstract

Background: Epidemiological studies of schizophrenia suggest that this disorder has a substantial genetic component. Cognitive and social abilities, as well as the volumes of brain regions involved in emotion processing, have been found to be distributed along a continuum when comparing patients, siblings and controls, with siblings showing intermediate scores.

Aims: To establish whether facial expression recognition is impaired in unaffected siblings of patients.

Method: Emotion and gender recognition were evaluated in a three-group pre-post study design in drug-naive patients with first-episode schizophrenia (n=40) and their unaffected siblings (n=30) compared with controls (n=26).

Results: Patients and their healthy siblings showed impaired emotion recognition but normal gender recognition compared with controls. Patients'performance did not improve despite effective clinical stabilisation.

Conclusions: Impaired performance in healthy siblings and time stability in patients provides evidence of impairment of facial emotion recognition as an actual phenotype of schizophrenia.

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