Identifying the Social and Emotional Brain in Early Course Schizophrenia

Background and Purpose: Emotional intelligence, a domain of social cognition, is the ability to process and understand emotions in the self and others. Individuals with schizophrenia have great difficulties in understanding others, and central contributors to their social dysfunction are deficits in emotional intelligence. An important goal in social work practice and research is to improve social recovery in schizophrenia through remediation of social-cognitive deficits, such as emotional intelligence. Neuroscience offers a unique biological lens that can inform the understanding and treatment of emotion-related social-cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. As such, this study sought to integrate social work research on emotionality with neuroscience by examining the neurobiological correlates of socio-emotional deficits in emotional intelligence in individuals with early course schizophrenia. 

Methods: A total of 51 individuals diagnosed with early course, stabilized schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder completed structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans and the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT; Mayer et al., 2003). The MSCEIT is a key measure of social cognition in schizophrenia that has good psychometric properties and is recommended by the Measurement and Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia (MATRICS) committee. The MSCEIT assesses overall and four subscales of emotional intelligence: Perceiving, Facilitating, Understanding, and Managing emotions. Scores for the four subscales and overall performances are based on a scale of a large normative sample with a mean of 100 (SD = 15; Mayer et al., 2003). Investigation of the associations between MSCEIT performance and structural gray matter density was examined using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis employing general linear models in Statistical Parametric Mapping Software, version 5 (SPM5), adjusting for demographic and illness-related confounds.

Results: Compared to the normative sample mean of 100 (Mayer et al., 2003), individuals with early course schizophrenia displayed significant performance impairments on the MSCEIT overall (t = -6.01, p = <0.001) and the Perceiving (t = -3.63, p = 0.001), Facilitating (t = -2.40, p = 0.020), Understanding (t = -7.14, p = <0.001), and Managing (t = -7.46, p = <0.001) Emotions subscales. Poorer overall and Facilitating, Understanding, and Managing Emotions subscale performance on the MSCEIT showed significant relationships with reduced gray matter density in the left parahippocampal gyrus. Additionally, attenuated performance on the Facilitating and Managing Emotions subscales was significantly associated with reduced right posterior cingulate gray matter density.  

Conclusion and Implications: These findings demonstrate a possible neural basis for impaired emotional intelligence in early course schizophrenia. Associations between poor MSCEIT performance and neurobiological structures commonly implicated in emotion processing (e.g., left parahippocampal gyrus and right posterior cingulate) were observed. With the biopsychosocial perspective of social work, evidence for neural deficits in emotionality have important implications for the understanding and impact of social-cognitive interventions targeted at improving social outcomes in individuals with this condition.

References

Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P., Caruso, D.R., Sitarenios, G. (2003). Measuring emotional intelligence

with the MSCEIT V2.0. Emotion, 3(1), 97-105.