THE STUDY OF EMOTIONAL PROCESSES IN SCHIZOPHRENIA

University Of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

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Linked publications & trials

Abstract

DESCRIPTION: Schizophrenia has traditionally been viewed as an illness with prominent clinical features of psychosis and cognitive dysfunction. However, disturbances in emotional processes, including expression, experience and recognition of emotions, also are common areas of dysfunction in patients with schizophrenia. The purpose of this career development award is to examine emotional processes in relation to the course, symptoms and treatment of schizophrenia, and to develop new instruments to assess emotional processes in schizophrenia. The goals for this application can be broadly separated into two groups: longitudinal assessment of emotional processes in schizophrenia, and development of novel emotional probes that will further delineate emotional dysfunction in schizophrenia. The proposed research would assess emotional processes in schizophrenia and to investigate the interrelationship between emotional processes, psychotic symptoms and cognitive dysfunction. Throughout the early part of the project, expression, experience and recognition of emotion would be evaluated with previously established assessments of affective flattening, mood, and ability to discriminate basic emotions. Novel emotional probes that explore emotional processes in a more fundamental manner would then be developed. In the later stages of the project, schizophrenics would be compared with neuropsychiatric controls, and emotional dysfunction would be treated.