Jia Huang

Anticipatory and consummatory components of the experience of pleasure in schizophrenia: Cross-cultural validation and extension

This study examined anticipatory and consummatory pleasure in schizophrenia patients with and without negative symptoms. Negative symptom patients experienced less anticipatory pleasure than non-negative symptom patients; only one facet of consummatory pleasure was unaffected in negative schizophrenia. Greater pleasure deficits were correlated with more severe positive and negative symptoms.

Motivational deficits in effort-based decision making in individuals with subsyndromal depression, first-episode and remitted depression patients

Anhedonia is a hallmark symptom of major depressive disorder (MDD). Preliminary findings suggest that anhedonia is characterized by reduced reward anticipation and motivation of obtaining reward. However, relatively little is known about reward-based decision-making in depression. We tested the hypothesis that anhedonia in MDD may reflect specific impairments in motivation on reward-based decision-making and the deficits might be associated with depressive symptoms severity. In study 1, individuals with and without depressive symptoms performed the modified version of the Effort Expenditure for Rewards Task (EEfRT), a behavioral measure of cost/benefit decision-making. In study 2, MDD patients, remitted MDD patients and healthy controls were recruited for the same procedures. We found evidence for decreased willingness to make effort for rewards among individuals with subsyndromal depression; the effect was amplified in MDD patients, but dissipated in patients with remitted depression. We also found that reduced anticipatory and consummatory pleasure predicted decreased willingness to expend efforts to obtain rewards in MDD patients. For individuals with subsyndromal depression, the impairments were correlated with anticipatory anhedonia but not consummatory anhedonia. These data offer novel evidence that motivational deficits in MDD are correlated with depression severity and predicted by self-reported anhedonia.

Neurological soft signs discriminate schizophrenia from major depression but not bipolar disorder.

BACKGROUND Neurological soft signs (NSS) are minor neurological abnormalities, including motor, sensory, and inhibitory dysfunction. Schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric disorders are associated with a higher prevalence of NSS. However, the relationships between NSS and schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression are unclear. The present study aimed to examine the specificity of NSS among these three clinical groups. METHOD A total of 120 demographically matched participants (30 each in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, and healthy controls) were recruited for the study. NSS subscales of the Cambridge Neurological Inventory (CNI) were administered to each participant. RESULTS Significant differences were found in the total score of NSS (p<0.01), and the subscale scores for motor coordination (p<0.01), sensory integration (p=0.01) and disinhibition (p<0.01). Both patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder showed more total NSS signs than healthy controls (p<0.01). Patients with schizophrenia also showed more total NSS signs than patients with major depression (p=0.02). Both patients with schizophrenia and patients with bipolar disorder showed more motor coordination signs than healthy controls and patients with major depression (p<0.05). Moreover, compared with healthy controls, patients with schizophrenia showed more disinhibition signs (p<0.01), while patients with bipolar disorder showed more sensory integration signs (p<0.01). Discriminant analysis showed 77.5% of correct classification of patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder from patients with major depression and healthy controls. CONCLUSIONS NSS are not unique to schizophrenia, but are also found in bipolar disorder, while patients with major depression are comparable to normal controls. Our results suggest that NSS, especially motor-coordination signs, can differentiate schizophrenia from major depression but not bipolar disorder. Our results may provide further evidence to support the similarity between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder from the dimension of behavioral expression.

Extending the utility of the Depression Anxiety Stress scale by examining its psychometric properties in Chinese settings

The Depression Anxiety Stress scale (DASS) is a widely used instrument for assessing mental health status, but the construct validity of the Chinese version of the test has not been demonstrated. The current study recruited three independent samples of Chinese participants to examine its reliability, factor structure, and utility in differentiating groups expected to show high and low scores on the scales. The first sample comprised 605 undergraduate student volunteers from Beijing, the second sample comprised 138 residents from the Sichuan Province who had experienced the 2008 earthquake there, and the third sample comprised 86 Beijing residents. Cronbachs alpha values in excess of 0.80 were found for all samples and all scales. Confirmatory factor analysis with the student sample supported a three-factor latent structure for the DASS (depression, anxiety, and stress). Substantially higher scores on all scales were found for the Sichuan earthquake sample compared with the Beijing residents sample. Implications of these findings for the assessment of mental status using the DASS in China are discussed.

Dexterous movement complexity and cerebellar activation: A meta-analysis

The importance of the cerebellum in coordinates of movement has been established by lesion studies. However, there is no clear understanding of whether there is consistent activation in cerebellum across various motor task complexities or how different parts of the cerebellum contribute to finger coordinates in dexterous manipulation. This article reviews imaging studies with data from healthy subjects. A mini meta-analysis using label-based and activation likelihood estimation (ALE) methods reveals that ipsilateral anterior and vermis regions of the cerebellum were consistently activated across various dexterous movement complexities and were associated with finger and hand movement.

Emotion categorization perception in schizophrenia in conversations with different social contexts

Objective: The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the boundaries between the happy and angry emotions of schizophrenia would be influenced by social context and the difference in emotion categorization boundaries between schizophrenia patients and healthy controls. Method: Eighteen patients with schizophrenia and 16 healthy controls were given a forced-choice emotion identification task in which they were required to listen to a series of conversations with different social contexts. The stimuli were linear morphed facial expressions between ‘happy’ and ‘angry’ emotions. For each type of social context, the shift point was used as the parameter to estimate when the subjects began to perceive the morphed facial expression as angry. The response slope was used to estimate how abruptly this change in perception occurred. Results: There was no significant difference in the schizophrenia group in the shift point of emotion categorization perception for four categories of conversations occurring in different social contexts. Compared with the healthy controls, the schizophrenia group demonstrated a steeper response slope at the shift point regardless of the conversation type. Conclusion: The patients with schizophrenia were less discriminative in their categorization of emotion perception in conversations with different social contexts. The schizophrenia patients, however, were more alert to angry facial expressions in the process of facial expressions morphing from happy to angry, independent of the social context.

Facial perception bias in patients with major depression.

This study used a morphed categorical perception facial expression task to evaluate whether patients with depression demonstrated deficits in distinguishing boundaries between emotions. Forty-one patients with depression and 41 healthy controls took part in this study. They were administered a standardized set of morphed photographs of facial expressions with varying emotional intensities between 0% and 100% of the emotion, in 10% increments to provide a range of intensities from pleasant to unpleasant(e.g. happy to sad, happy to angry) and approach-avoidance (e.g. angry to fearful). Compared with healthy controls, the patients with depression demonstrated a rapid perception of sad expressions in happy-sad emotional continuum and demonstrated a rapid perception of angry expressions in angry-fearful emotional continuum. In addition, when facial expressions shifted from happy to angry, the depressed patients had a clear demarcation for the happy-angry continuum. Depressed patients had a perceptual bias towards unpleasant versus pleasant expressions and the hypersensitivity to angry facial signals might influence the interaction behaviors between depressed patients and others.

Prospective memory in non-psychotic first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia

Although a number of studies have found prospective memory (PM) impairment in patients with schizophrenia, very little is known about the PM performance in non-psychotic relatives of these patients. The current study aimed to explore the PM performance in non-psychotic first-degree relatives of these patients. Two groups of participants (26 non-psychotic first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients and 26 healthy comparison participants) were administered three PM tasks (time-, event-, and activity-based) and a set of neurocognitive tests. Results showed that the relatives performed significantly worse than the comparisons on most indices of the PM tasks, with a similar pattern of impairment found in other neurocognitive measures. Together with findings from previous studies, results of the current study suggest that PM may be a potential endophenotype for schizophrenia.

Anhedonia in schizophrenia: Deficits in both motivation and hedonic capacity

Anhedonia is one of the core negative symptoms of schizophrenia that affect the ultimate outcome of this disorder. It is unclear whether the motivational or the hedonic component of anhedonia is impaired in patients with schizophrenia. This study examined the deficits in motivation and hedonic capacity in patients with schizophrenia using an Effort-based pleasure experience task (E-pet). Twenty-two schizophrenia patients with prominent negative symptoms, 18 schizophrenia patients without prominent negative symptoms and 29 healthy controls participated in the present study. All of them were administered the E-pet task, which required the participants to make decisions on whether to choose a hard or easy task based on probability and reward magnitude. When making the grip effort allocation decision, schizophrenia patients with prominent negative symptoms were significantly less likely to choose a hard task than healthy controls. As the reward magnitude and the estimated reward value increased, unlike healthy controls, schizophrenia patients with prominent negative symptoms did not increase their hard task choices. They were also significantly less likely to choose a hard task than healthy controls in medium and high probability conditions. When anticipating potential rewards, these patients reported significantly less anticipatory pleasure than healthy controls, even when reward probability and magnitude increased. The pleasure experience rating after obtaining the actual reward was positively correlated with two pleasure experience scales in schizophrenia patients. In conclusion, patients with schizophrenia, especially those with prominent negative symptoms, showed deficits in both reward motivation and anticipatory pleasure experience.

Temporal Processing Impairment in Children with Attention-Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder.

The current study aimed to investigate temporal processing in Chinese children with Attention-Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder(ADHD) using time production, time reproduction paradigm and duration discrimination tasks. A battery of tests specifically designed to measure temporal processing was administered to 94 children with ADHD and 100 demographically matched healthy children. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and a repeated measure MANOVA indicated that children with ADHD were impaired in time processing functions. The results of pairwise comparisons showed that the probands with a family history of ADHD performed significantly worse than those without family history in the time production tasks and the time reproduction task. Logistic regression analysis showed duration discrimination had a significant role in predicting whether the children were suffering from ADHD or not, while temporal processing had a significant role in predicting whether the ADHD children had a family history or not. This study provides further support for the existence of a generic temporal processing impairment in ADHD children and suggests that abnormalities in time processing and ADHD share some common genetic factors.