Testosterone is related to activation of the inferior frontal gyrus during emotion face processing in men with schizophrenia but not in healthy patients, according to Ellen Ji and her associates.
The investigators assessed 16 males with schizophrenia and 16 healthy male controls by presenting them with 60 color pictures of human faces. Participants were told to pick the emotion shown using a button box, reported Ms. Ji of the University of New South Wales in Randwick, Australia, and her associates.
The men with schizophrenia showed much less inferior frontal gyrus activation than did those in the control group. Men with low-normal testosterone levels in the schizophrenia group had significantly worse face recognition results than did those with high-normal testosterone, but no correlation was found between low- and high-normal testosterone levels and face recognition in the control group.
“This preliminary finding provides the first evidence for a link between circulating testosterone levels and brain activity in a region characterized by hypoactivity during negative emotion face processing in men with schizophrenia, suggesting that an increase in normal levels of testosterone may have beneficial effects for emotion processing in men with schizophrenia,” the investigators concluded.
Find the full study in Behavioural Brain Research (2015;286:338-46 [doi:10.1016/j.bbr.2015.03.020]).
