Emotion Deficits in People with Schizophrenia

Translational research on emotion in schizophrenia has revealed deficits in emotion perception and expression, as well as intact areas, including emotional experience and brain activation in the presence of emotionally evocative material. Yet, a closer look at emotional experience reveals that all is not well in the experience domain. People with schizophrenia have difficulty anticipating emotional events and maintaining or savoring their emotional experiences, as evidenced in behavioral, psychophysiological, and brain imaging studies. Furthermore, people with schizophrenia have difficulty integrating emotion perception with context and reporting on feelings that are differently valenced than presented emotional stimuli. Differences in brain activation are typically observed in areas tightly coupled with cognitive control, such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and thus the latest research on emotion in schizophrenia explicitly integrates emotion and cognition. Translational research holds promise to identify when in the course of the disorder emotion deficits emerge and to develop more effective interventions for schizophrenia.