This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

‘Body maps’ show abnormal sensations of emotion in schizophrenia

Using a visual mapping task, researchers found that bodily sensations of emotions were abnormal in patients with schizophrenia, who reported less discrete and less clear bodily sensations across emotions compared with controls.

These findings, published in Schizophrenia Bulletin, indicate that abnormal bodily sensations of emotions may offer a possible target for future schizophrenia interventions, according to researchers.

“In the case of [schizophrenia], there is a profound alteration of embodiment in addition to abnormal perception and expression of emotions,” Lénie J. Torregrossa, PhD student at Vanderbilt University, and colleagues wrote. “The prevalence of bodily self-disturbances, interoception deficits and multisensory integration problems suggest that the bodily processing of emotions might be severely disrupted in [schizophrenia].”

The investigators examined whether the embodiment of emotion was disrupted in patients with schizophrenia. They asked 26 medicated individuals with schizophrenia and 26 matched controls to use a computerized topographical mapping tool known as EmBODY to identify locations on the body where they felt sensations when experiencing emotion, then compared the bodily maps of emotions between groups. Overall, 13 different emotions, including high-arousal emotions like fear, anger, happiness and pride, and low-arousal emotions like depression, plus a neutral state, were assessed.

Torregrossa and colleagues found that participants with schizophrenia had abnormal, indistinguishable body maps of emotions that indicated reduced sensations across all emotions, according to a press release. In contrast, the control group showed distinct maps of bodily sensations for all 13 emotions, suggesting specific patterns of higher arousal and lower energy for each emotion. In addition, participants with schizophrenia did not differentiate emotions on their body maps, according to the release.

The researchers also noted that in particular, those with schizophrenia had atypical body maps for low-arousal emotions compared with healthy controls.

“In the general population, low-arousal emotions are primarily associated with bodily deactivation, while high-arousal emotions are associated bodily activation,” Torregrossa and colleagues wrote. “This result suggests a more incongruous bodily sensation of emotions in [schizophrenia].”

After the investigators compared activation maps, controls demonstrated greater bodily sensations, particularly for high-arousal emotions; however, after comparing deactivation maps, participants with schizophrenia demonstrated greater embodied sensations than controls for pride, love, anxiety, surprise, happiness and anger categories, which the researchers noted are all linked to greater arousal in the general population.

"The main outcome of this research is that we have a better understanding of why people with schizophrenia might have trouble interacting with others," Torregrossa said in the press release. "What we can do now is help them learn to attend to physiological sensations arising from their bodies and use them to process emotions." – by Savannah Demko

Disclosure: Healio Psychiatry was unable to confirm any relevant financial disclosures at the time of publication.