Altered lateralisation of emotional prosody processing in schizophrenia

• Published in: Schizophrenia research Vol. 110; no. 1; pp. 180 - 187
• Main Authors: Bach, Dominik R, Herdener, Marcus, Grandjean, Didier, Sander, David, Seifritz, Erich, Strik, Werner K
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01-05-2009; Elsevier
• Subjects: Acoustic Stimulation - methods; Adult; Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Affective; Analysis of Variance; Biological and medical sciences; Brain Mapping; Cerebral Cortex - blood supply; Cerebral Cortex - physiopathology; Drug Combinations; Emotional; Emotions - physiology; Female; Functional Laterality - physiology; Humans; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted - methods; Language; Lateralization index; Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods; Male; Medical sciences; Nerve Net - blood supply; Nerve Net - physiopathology; Paranoid schizophrenia; Peroxides - blood; Prosody; Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Psychoses; Schizophrenia; Schizophrenia - pathology; Schizophrenia - physiopathology; Schizophrenic Psychology; Speech Perception - physiology; Urea - analogs & derivatives; Urea - blood; Young Adult; Lateralization index; Prosody; Language; Emotional; Affective; Paranoid schizophrenia; LI; Human; Affect affectivity; Hemispheric specialization; Central nervous system; Emotion emotionality; Encephalon; Psychosis; Laterality
• ISSN: 0920-9964; 1573-2509
• DOI: 10.1016/j.schres.2009.02.011

Abstract Alterations of cerebral lateralisation in schizophrenia have been reported consistently, and a reduced left-lateralisation has been suggested for language functions. Speech contains non-verbal information, e.g. prosody, and on a behavioural level, the extraction of emotional information from prosody is often impaired in schizophrenia. A previous functional magnetic resonance imaging study suggests increased left-lateralisation in schizophrenia during prosody processing, but did not disentangle effects of speech processing as such and emotional prosody processing. Here, we used meaningless syllables spoken with neutral, angry or fearful speech melody and measured blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) responses in 15 in-patients with schizophrenia and 15 healthy control participants matched for age and gender. Lateralisation indices were calculated for responses to emotional versus neutral prosody, and for all types of prosody versus baseline. Compared to control participants, patients with schizophrenia showed an increased right-lateralisation of emotional and non-emotional prosody processing in the temporal and parietal cortex. This right-lateralisation was increased in patients with reduced right-handedness and decreased in patients with stronger negative symptoms, particularly affective blunting, and with longer hospitalisation. Although patients with schizophrenia performed worse in emotion identification, this deficit was not related to lateralisation indices. Enhanced right-lateralisation to prosody resembles previous findings on laterality changes in speech processing and might suggest a common underlying cause in the organization of language functions.