QBI Neuroscience Seminar : The Neuroimaging and Genetics of Emotion Perception in Schizophrenia

Event Details

Date:

Wednesday, 16 November 2016

Time:

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Room:

Auditorium, room 701, QBI building 79

UQ Location:

Queensland Brain Institute (St Lucia)

URL:

http://qbi.uq.edu.au/neuroscience-seminars

Event category(s):

Full Description:: Speaker: Ilvana Dzafic
Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland

Title: The Neuroimaging and Genetics of Emotion Perception in Schizophrenia

Abstract:
Impaired emotion perception is a core deficit in schizophrenia and is robustly associated with poorer functional outcome. Deficits in emotion perception are stable throughout the course of illness, with current medical and psychological treatments having minimal effect. Recent work has demonstrated that in healthy individuals prior expectations facilitate perception of emotion by reducing the incoming information from facial and speech cues and by prioritising attention to cues that align with what is expected. In schizophrenia there is impaired precision in prior expectations and this is argued to impair perception. In terms of the underlying biology of impairment, the neural correlates of emotion perception show abnormal hemodynamic response and connectivity in schizophrenia. The present project aims to present a novel dynamic emotion perception (DEP) task, in order to (1) examine the influence of prior expectations on naturalistic emotion perception in healthy individuals, and (2) gauge impairment in schizophrenia at the behavioural, neuroimaging, and genetic level.