Uncinate fasciculus microstructural organisation and emotion recognition in schizophrenia: controlling for hit rate bias

Matthew Stevens; Síle Ní Mhurchú; Emma Corley; Ciara Egan; Brian Hallahan; Colm McDonald; Gary Donohoe; Tom Burke

doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2024.1302916

Uncinate fasciculus microstructural organisation and emotion recognition in schizophrenia: controlling for hit rate bias

Front Behav Neurosci. 2024 Mar 19:18:1302916. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2024.1302916. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Matthew Stevens^{1

2}, Síle Ní Mhurchú^{1

2}, Emma Corley^{1

2}, Ciara Egan^{1

2}, Brian Hallahan³, Colm McDonald³, Gary Donohoe^{1

2}, Tom Burke^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ School of Psychology, University of Galway, Galway, Ireland.
² Centre for Neuroimaging Cognition and Genomics (NICOG), University of Galway, Galway, Ireland.
³ Clinical Neuroimaging Laboratory, Galway Neuroscience Centre, College of Medicine Nursing and Health Sciences, University of Galway, Galway, Ireland.

Abstract

Introduction: Schizophrenia (SCZ) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by functional and structural brain dysconnectivity and disturbances in perception, cognition, emotion, and social functioning. In the present study, we investigated whether the microstructural organisation of the uncinate fasciculus (UF) was associated with emotion recognition (ER) performance. Additionally, we investigated the usefulness of an unbiased hit rate (UHR) score to control for response biases (i.e., participant guessing) during an emotion recognition task (ERT).

Methods: Fifty-eight individuals diagnosed with SCZ were included. The CANTAB ERT was used to measure social cognition. Specific ROI manual tract segmentation was completed using ExploreDTI and followed the protocol previously outlined by Coad et al. (2020).

Results: We found that the microstructural organisation of the UF was significantly correlated with physical neglect and ER outcomes. Furthermore, we found that the UHR score was more sensitive to ERT subscale emotion items than the standard HR score. Finally, given the association between childhood trauma (in particular childhood neglect) and social cognition in SCZ, a mediation analysis found evidence that microstructural alterations of the UF mediated an association between childhood trauma and social cognitive performance.

Discussion: The mediating role of microstructural alterations in the UF on the association between childhood trauma and social cognitive performance suggests that early life adversity impacts both brain development and social cognitive outcomes for people with SCZ. Limitations of the present study include the restricted ability of the tensor model to correctly assess multi-directionality at regions where fibre populations intersect.

Keywords: childhood trauma; cognition; emotion recognition; schizophrenia; unbiased hit rate; uncinate fasciculus.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This study was funded through grants to GD from the European Research Council (ERC-2015-STG-677467), the Health Research Board (RL-2020-007), and the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI-16/ERCS/3787). MS was funded by a scholarship from the Galway Neuroscience Centre, Ireland.