The interaction of working memory and emotion in persons clinically at risk for psychosis: An fMRI pilot study

Pauly, Katharina; Seiferth, Nina Y.; Kellermann, Thilo; Ruhrmann, Stephan; Daumann, Bianca; Backes, Volker; Klosterkötter, Joachim; Shah, N. Jon; Schneider, Frank; Kircher, Tilo T.; Habel, Ute

doi:10.1016/j.schres.2009.12.008

« Previous Next »Schizophrenia Research
Volume 120, Issue 1 , Pages 167-176, July 2010

The interaction of working memory and emotion in persons clinically at risk for psychosis: An fMRI pilot study

Katharina Pauly
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstr. 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany
- Jülich-Aachen Research Alliance-Translational Brain Medicine (JARA-BRAIN), Germany
- Corresponding author. Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstr. 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany. Tel.: +49 241 8080279; fax: +49 8082401.
Nina Y. Seiferth
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstr. 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany
- Present address: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charité-University Medicine Berlin, Charitéplatz 1, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
Thilo Kellermann
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstr. 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany
- Jülich-Aachen Research Alliance-Translational Brain Medicine (JARA-BRAIN), Germany
Stephan Ruhrmann
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Cologne, Kerpener Str. 62, 50924 Köln, Germany
Bianca Daumann
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Cologne, Kerpener Str. 62, 50924 Köln, Germany
Volker Backes
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstr. 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany
- Jülich-Aachen Research Alliance-Translational Brain Medicine (JARA-BRAIN), Germany
Joachim Klosterkötter
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Cologne, Kerpener Str. 62, 50924 Köln, Germany
N. Jon Shah
- Jülich-Aachen Research Alliance-Translational Brain Medicine (JARA-BRAIN), Germany
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine-4, Research Center Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany
- Brain Imaging Center West (BICW), Research Center Jülich, Germany
- Department of Neurology, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstr. 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany
Frank Schneider
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstr. 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany
- Jülich-Aachen Research Alliance-Translational Brain Medicine (JARA-BRAIN), Germany
- Brain Imaging Center West (BICW), Research Center Jülich, Germany
Tilo T. Kircher
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstr. 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany
- Brain Imaging Center West (BICW), Research Center Jülich, Germany
- Present address: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Philipps-University Marburg, Rudolf-Bultmann-Straße 8, 35039 Marburg, Germany.
Ute Habel
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstr. 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany
- Jülich-Aachen Research Alliance-Translational Brain Medicine (JARA-BRAIN), Germany

Received 21 August 2009; received in revised form 23 November 2009; accepted 4 December 2009. published online 06 January 2010.

Abstract

Subtle emotional and cognitive dysfunctions may already be apparent in individuals at risk for psychosis. However, there is a paucity of research on the neural correlates of the interaction of both domains. It remains unclear whether those correlates are already dysfunctional before a transition to psychosis.

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the interaction of working memory and emotion in 12 persons clinically at high risk for psychosis (CHR) and 12 healthy subjects individually matched for age, gender and parental education. Participants performed an n-back task while negative or neutral emotion was induced by olfactory stimulation.

Although healthy and psychosis-prone subjects did not differ in their working memory performance or the evaluation of the induced emotion, decreased activations were found in CHR subjects in the superior parietal lobe and the precuneus during working memory and in the insula during emotion induction. Looking at the interaction, CHR subjects, showed decreased activation in the right superior temporal gyrus, which correlated negatively with psychopathological scores. Decreased activation was also found in the thalamus. However, an increase of activation emerged in several cerebellar regions.

Dysfunctions in areas associated with controlling whether incoming information is linked to emotional content and in the integration of multimodal information might lead to compensatory activations of cerebellar regions known to be involved in olfactory and working memory processes. Our study underlines that cerebral dysfunctions related to cognitive and emotional processes, as well as their interaction, can emerge in persons with CHR, even in absence of behavioral differences.

Keywords: Ultra-high risk, Working memory, Emotion, Olfaction, fMRI, n-back task