Brain metabolism during hallucination-like auditory stimulation in schizophrenia

Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) in schizophrenia are typically characterized by rich emotional content. Despite the prominent role of emotion in regulating normal perception, the neural interface between emotion-processing regions such as the amygdala and auditory regions involved in perception...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2014-01, Vol.9 (1), p.e84987-e84987
Main Authors: Horga, Guillermo, Fernández-Egea, Emilio, Mané, Anna, Font, Mireia, Schatz, Kelly C, Falcon, Carles, Lomeña, Francisco, Bernardo, Miguel, Parellada, Eduard
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic Stimulation
Adult
Al·lucinacions i il·lusions
Amygdala
Amygdala - diagnostic imaging
Amygdala - metabolism
Amygdala - physiopathology
Amygdaloid body
Auditory Cortex - diagnostic imaging
Auditory Cortex - metabolism
Auditory Cortex - physiopathology
Auditory stimuli
Biology
Brain
Brain Mapping
Case-Control Studies
Computer applications
Cortex (auditory)
Cos amigdaloide
Dopamine
Emotions
Esquizofrènia
Female
Glucose - metabolism
Hallucinations
Hallucinations - diagnostic imaging
Hallucinations - metabolism
Hallucinations - physiopathology
Hallucinations and illusions
Hearing disorders
Humans
Hypotheses
Implants
Information processing
Male
Medical imaging
Medical research
Medicine
Mental disorders
Metabolism
Mimicry
Neurosciences
Patients
Perception
Physiological aspects
Positron emission tomography
Prefrontal cortex
Psychiatry
Psychobiology
Psychosis
Remission Induction
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia - diagnostic imaging
Schizophrenia - metabolism
Schizophrenia - physiopathology
Schizophrenic Psychology
Studies
Thalamus
Thalamus - diagnostic imaging
Thalamus - metabolism
Thalamus - physiopathology
Tinnitus
Tomografia
Tomography
Trastorns auditius
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Summary:Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) in schizophrenia are typically characterized by rich emotional content. Despite the prominent role of emotion in regulating normal perception, the neural interface between emotion-processing regions such as the amygdala and auditory regions involved in perception remains relatively unexplored in AVH. Here, we studied brain metabolism using FDG-PET in 9 remitted patients with schizophrenia that previously reported severe AVH during an acute psychotic episode and 8 matched healthy controls. Participants were scanned twice: (1) at rest and (2) during the perception of aversive auditory stimuli mimicking the content of AVH. Compared to controls, remitted patients showed an exaggerated response to the AVH-like stimuli in limbic and paralimbic regions, including the left amygdala. Furthermore, patients displayed abnormally strong connections between the amygdala and auditory regions of the cortex and thalamus, along with abnormally weak connections between the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex. These results suggest that abnormal modulation of the auditory cortex by limbic-thalamic structures might be involved in the pathophysiology of AVH and may potentially account for the emotional features that characterize hallucinatory percepts in schizophrenia.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0084987