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Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2022 Mar:241:267-274.
doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2022.02.013. Epub 2022 Feb 16.

Changes in emotion processing and social cognition with auditory versus visual neuroscience-informed cognitive training in individuals with schizophrenia

Linda Scoriels  1 , Larissa T Genaro  2 , Stella Keffer  2 , Anna Luiza Guimarães  2 , Bárbara Barros-Dumas  2 , Luana G Mororó  2 , Thales Biagioni  2 , Camila Lucena  2 , Thaís R da Hora  2 , Barbara J Sahakian  3 , Melissa Fisher  4 , Sophia Vinogradov  4 , Rogério Panizzutti  5
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

Changes in emotion processing and social cognition with auditory versus visual neuroscience-informed cognitive training in individuals with schizophrenia

Linda Scoriels et al. Schizophr Res. 2022 Mar.

Abstract

Background: Neuroscience-informed cognitive training has been used to remediate cognitive deficits in schizophrenia, but their effect on emotion processing and social cognition deficits, which may involve auditory and visual impairments, remain relatively unknown. In this study, we compared the efficacy of auditory versus visual neuroscience-informed cognitive training on emotion processing and social cognition in individuals with schizophrenia.

Methods: In this randomised, double-blind clinical trial, 79 participants with chronic schizophrenia performed 40-hours auditory or visual dynamically equivalent computerised cognitive training. We assessed emotion processing and social cognition using Emotion Recognition, Affective Go-NoGo, Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional-Intelligence, Theory of mind, and Hinting tests before and after 20 h and 40 h of training.

Results: After training, participants from both groups decreased their reaction time for facial emotion recognition (p = 3 × 10-6, d = 0.9). This was more remarkable for the auditory group when analysing individual emotions. Both groups also reduced omissions in the affective go-no go (p = 0.01, d = 0.6), which was also attributed, post hoc, to the auditory group. Trends for improvement were observed in theory of mind (p = 0.06, d = 0.6) for both groups. Improvement in emotion processing was associated with improvement in reasoning and problem solving and global cognition and improvement in theory of mind was associated with improvement in attention and global cognition.

Conclusions: Both the auditory and the visual neuroscience-informed cognitive training were efficacious at improving emotion processing and social cognition in individuals with schizophrenia, although improvement was more remarkable for the auditory training group. These improvements were related to cognitive - but not symptom - improvement.

Keywords: Auditory training; Emotion processing; Neuroscience-informed; Schizophrenia; Social cognition; Visual training.

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Conflict of interest statement

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Dr. Panizzutti is the founder of NeuroForma LTDA, a company with a financial interest in cognitive training. Professor Sahakian consults for Cambridge Cognition and Greenfield BioVentures. The remaining authors have no conflict of interest to disclose.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.. Facial emotion recognition processing tests scores in schizophrenia participants.
A. Emotion Recognition Test (ERT) global reaction time (RT); B. ERT RT per emotion category. Error bars represent SEM, ***p≤0.001, **p≤0.01, * p≤0.05, and 0.05<trends≤0.1.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.. Correlations between emotion processing and social cognition tests score changes (40h of training – baseline) and cognitive score changes.
A. Correlations between ERT RT score change and reasoning and problem solving score change; B. Correlations between AGN omissions score change and Reasoning and problem solving score change; C. Correlations between AGN omissions score change and Global cognition score change; D. Correlations between TOM score change and Attention score change; E. Correlations between TOM score change and Global cognition score change. Correlations with p≤0.05 are in bold and statistically significant correlations are in bold and 0.05<p≤0.1 are in italic.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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