scholarly journals Pareidolia in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eid G. Abo Hamza ◽  
Szabolcs Kéri ◽  
Katalin Csigó ◽  
Dalia Bedewy ◽  
Ahmed A. Moustafa

While there are many studies on pareidolia in healthy individuals and patients with schizophrenia, to our knowledge, there are no prior studies on pareidolia in patients with bipolar disorder. Accordingly, in this study, we, for the first time, measured pareidolia in patients with bipolar disorder (N = 50), and compared that to patients with schizophrenia (N = 50) and healthy controls (N = 50). We have used (a) the scene test, which consists of 10 blurred images of natural scenes that was previously found to produce illusory face responses and (b) the noise test which had 32 black and white images consisting of visual noise and 8 images depicting human faces; participants indicated whether a face was present on these images and to point to the location where they saw the face. Illusory responses were defined as answers when observers falsely identified objects that were not on the images in the scene task (maximum illusory score: 10), and the number of noise images in which they reported the presence of a face (maximum illusory score: 32). Further, we also calculated the total pareidolia score for each task (the sum number of images with illusory responses in the scene and noise tests). The responses were scored by two independent raters with an excellent congruence (kappa > 0.9). Our results show that schizophrenia patients scored higher on pareidolia measures than both healthy controls and patients with bipolar disorder. Our findings are agreement with prior findings on more impaired cognitive processes in schizophrenia than in bipolar patients.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eid G. Abo Hamza ◽  
Szabolcs Kéri ◽  
Katalin Csigó ◽  
Dalia Bedewy ◽  
Ahmed A. Moustafa

Abstract While there are many studies on pareidolia in healthy individuals and patients with schizophrenia, to our knowledge, there are no prior studies on pareidolia in patients with bipolar disorder. Accordingly, in this study, we, for the first time, measured pareidolia in patients with bipolar disorder (N = 50), and compared that to patients with schizophrenia (N = 50) and healthy controls (N = 50). We have used (a) the scene test, which consists of 10 blurred images of natural scenes that was previously found to produce illusory face responses and (b) the noise test which had 32 black and white images consisting of visual noise and 8 images depicting human faces; participants indicated whether a face was present on these images and to point to the location where they saw the face. Illusory responses were defined as answers when observers falsely identified objects that were not on the images in the scene task (maximum illusory score: 10), and the number of noise images in which they reported the presence of a face (maximum illusory score: 32). Further, we also calculated the total pareidolia score for each task (the sum number of images with illusory responses in the scene and noise tests). The responses were scored by two independent raters with an excellent congruence (kappa > 0.9). Our results show that schizophrenia patients scored higher on pareidolia measures than both healthy controls and patients with bipolar disorder. Our findings are agreement with prior findings on more impaired cognitive processes in schizophrenia than in bipolar patients.


2020 ◽  
pp. 025371762097528
Author(s):  
Velprashanth Venkatesan ◽  
Christoday R J Khess ◽  
Umesh Shreekantiah ◽  
Nishant Goyal ◽  
K. K. Kshitiz

Background: Patients with bipolar disorder demonstrate increased sensitivity to appetitive/rewarding stimuli even during euthymia. On presentation of arousing pictures, they show a peculiar response, suggesting heightened vigilance. While responding to looming arousing cues, studies show subjects with anxiety spectrum disorders exhibit increased reaction time (RT), explained by the “looming-vulnerability model.” This study aimed to investigate the responses to looming arousing cues in euthymic bipolar patients and their first-degree relatives, as compared to healthy controls. Method: A looming appetitive and aversive cue paradigm was designed for assessing the RT of patients to process appetitive and aversive cues. The behavioral inhibition/activation and sensitivity to reward/punishment amongst the groups were also assessed. Results: The bipolar group showed significantly longer RT to process appetitive cues irrespective of the looming condition. Aversive cues elicited significantly longer RT in both the bipolar group and in first-degree relatives, but only when presented with the looming condition. Significant looming bias was elicited in the bipolar group which suggested a particular cognitive style to looming cues. A composite measure of RT along with sensitivity to reward/punishment distinguishes the bipolar group and their first-degree relatives from the healthy controls. Conclusion: The looming vulnerability model may provide important insights for future exploration of cognitive endophenotypes in bipolar disorder.


2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. K. Wynn ◽  
C. Jahshan ◽  
L. L. Altshuler ◽  
D. C. Glahn ◽  
M. F. Green

BackgroundPatients with bipolar disorder exhibit consistent deficits in facial affect identification at both behavioral and neural levels. However, little is known about which stages of facial affect processing are dysfunctional.MethodEvent-related potentials (ERPs), including amplitude and latency, were used to evaluate two stages of facial affect processing: N170 to examine structural encoding of facial features and N250 to examine decoding of facial features in 57 bipolar disorder patients, 30 schizophrenia patients and 30 healthy controls. Three conditions were administered: participants were asked to identify the emotion of a face, the gender of a face, or whether a building was one or two stories tall.ResultsSchizophrenia patients' emotion identification accuracy was lower than that of bipolar patients and healthy controls. N170 amplitude was significantly smaller in schizophrenia patients compared to bipolar patients and healthy controls, which did not differ from each other. Both patient groups had significantly longer N170 latency compared to healthy controls. For N250, both patient groups showed significantly smaller amplitudes compared with controls, but did not differ from each other. Bipolar patients showed longer N250 latency than healthy controls; patient groups did not differ from each other.ConclusionsBipolar disorder patients have relatively intact structural encoding of faces (N170) but are impaired when decoding facial features for complex judgments about faces (N250 latency and amplitude), such as identifying emotion or gender.


2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (7) ◽  
pp. 1547-1558 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Sarıçiçek ◽  
N. Zorlu ◽  
N. Yalın ◽  
C. Hıdıroğlu ◽  
B. Çavuşoğlu ◽  
...  

BackgroundSeveral lines of evidence suggest that bipolar disorder (BD) is associated with white matter (WM) pathology. Investigation of unaffected first-degree relatives of BD patients may help to distinguish structural biomarkers of genetic risk without the confounding effects of burden of illness, medication or clinical state. In the present study, we applied tract-based spatial statistics to study WM changes in patients with BD, unaffected siblings and controls.MethodA total of 27 euthymic patients with BD type I, 20 unaffected siblings of bipolar patients and 29 healthy controls who did not have any current or past diagnosis of Axis I psychiatric disorders were enrolled in the study.ResultsFractional anisotropy (FA) was significantly lower in BD patients than in the control group in the corpus callosum, fornix, bilateral superior longitudinal fasciculus, inferior longitudinal fasciculus, inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, anterior thalamic radiation, posterior thalamic radiation, cingulum, uncinate fasciculus, superior corona radiata, anterior corona radiata and left external capsule. In region-of-interest (ROI) analyses, we found that both unaffected siblings and bipolar patients had significantly reduced FA in the left posterior thalamic radiation, the left sagittal stratum, and the fornix compared with healthy controls. Average FA for unaffected siblings was intermediate between the healthy controls and bipolar patients within these ROIs.ConclusionsDecreased FA in the fornix, left posterior thalamic radiation and left sagittal stratum in both bipolar patients and unaffected siblings may represent a potential structural endophenotype or a trait-based marker for BD.


2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (S1) ◽  
pp. S348-S349
Author(s):  
E. Mnatsakanian ◽  
M. Sharaev ◽  
V. Krjukov ◽  
O. Antipova ◽  
V. Krasnov

IntroductionThe knowledge on brain mechanisms of psychopathology can be very useful for the diagnosis and treatment of patients.ObjectivesPatients with major depressive disorder (MDD) show attention bias to the negative emotional stimuli. Automatic (unconscious) emotional processing in such patients may become a prospective biomarker for depression.AimsWe aimed at studying the EEG-correlates of unconscious expectation of angry human faces in MDD patients compared to healthy controls.Methods128-channel EEG was recorded in MDD (23 females and 7 males) and in healthy volunteers (22 females and 8 males) while they categorized pictures as humans or animals. Half of the pictures were neutral and half were showing the faces of angry humans or animals. The pictures were preceded by cues (one for each category), which meaning was not explained to the participants. We performed the wavelet analysis on EEG recorded during the face expectation period: 1000–2000 ms from the cue onset.ResultsWe found the emotional modulation (EM) in EEG rhythms during the expectation of angry vs. neutral faces in both groups. Statistical comparison of the spectral power using 2 × 2 factorial design showed that the EM differences (P < 0.05) between the groups were in the left parietal locations in 9 Hz and in 16–18 Hz, in the right parietal locations in 27–28 Hz, and in the right frontal area in 30–31 Hz.ConclusionsThe unconscious expectation of angry vs. neutral faces resulted in EM differences between the MDD and healthy controls in the right frontal and bilateral parietal areas mostly in beta and gamma ranges.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.


1998 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 615-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa A. Parr ◽  
Tara Dove ◽  
William D. Hopkins

Five chimpanzees were tested on their ability to discriminate faces and automobiles presented in both their upright and inverted orientations. The face stimuli consisted of 30 black and white photographs, 10 each of unfamiliar chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), brown capuchins (Cebus apella), and humans (Homo sapiens). Ten black and white photographs of automobiles were also used. The stimuli were presented in a sequential matching-to-sample (SMTS) format using a computerized joystick-testing apparatus. Subjects performed better on upright than inverted stimuli in all classes. Performance was significantly better on upright than inverted presentations of chimpanzee and human faces but not on capuchin monkey faces or automobiles. These data support previous studies in humans that suggest the inversion effect occurs for stimuli for which subjects have developed an expertise. Alternative explanations for the inversion effect based on the type of spatial frequency contained in the stimuli are also discussed. These data are the first to provide evidence for the inversion effect using several classes of face stimuli in a great ape species.


2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 193-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meltem Ceyhan ◽  
Baki Adapınar ◽  
Gokay Aksaray ◽  
Figen Ozdemir ◽  
Ertugrul Colak

Objective:To evaluate the absence and size of massa intermedia (MI), a midline thalamic structure, and its gender-specific alteration in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.Methods:Thirty-five patients with schizophrenia (17 females and 18 males), 21 patients with bipolar disorder (15 females and 6 males) and 89 healthy controls (50 females and 39 males) were evaluated by magnetic resonance imaging. Thin-slice magnetic resonance images of the brain were evaluated. MI was determined in coronal and sagittal images, and area of the MI was measured on the sagittal plane.Results:Females had a significantly lower incidence of absent MI compared with males in the healthy control group. The absence of MI in schizophrenia and bipolar patients was not higher than the incidence in healthy controls. The size of MI showed a gender difference. The mean MI area size was smaller in female schizophrenia patients than in female controls, while no significant difference was observed between male schizophrenia patients and their controls.Conclusions:The size of MI, a gender difference midline structure, is smaller in females with schizophrenia, and the results of this study support other studies of structural aberration of the thalamus and other midline structures in the brains of patients with schizophrenia.


2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (S1) ◽  
pp. S213-S213 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Tournikioti ◽  
P. Ferentinos ◽  
I. Michopoulos ◽  
D. Dikeos ◽  
C. Soldatos ◽  
...  

IntroductionBipolar disorder (BD) is frequently associated with cognitive deficits in attention, verbal memory and executive functions that have been related to various clinical characteristics of the disorder.ObjectivesHowever, few studies have examined the effect of gender on cognition despite its clinical relevance.AimsThe aim of our study was to investigate potential diagnosis-specific gender effects on visual memory/learning and executive functions in BD.MethodsCognitive performance of 60 bipolar-I patients and 30 healthy controls was evaluated by using CANTAB battery tasks targeting spatial memory (SRM), paired associative learning (PAL), executive functions (ID/ED, SOC). A multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) of neuropsychological parameters was performed with gender and diagnosis as fixed effects and age and education as covariates. Following univariate analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) were undertaken to examine the effect of gender on each neuropsychological task.ResultsBipolar patients showed significantly poorer performance in paired associative learning (PAL), set shifting (ID/ED) and planning (SOC). Moreover, a diagnosis specific gender effect was observed for cognitive functioning in BD (gender × diagnosis interaction P = 0.029). Specifically, male healthy controls outperformed healthy females in tasks of visual memory/learning but this pattern was not sustained (SRM) or was even reversed (PAL) in BD patients.ConclusionsThe present study is one of the few studies that have examined the effect of gender on neurocognitive function in BD. Our findings indicate that the gender-related variation observed in healthy subjects is disrupted in BD. Moreover, they suggest that gender may modulate the degree of frontotemporal dysregulation observed in BD.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 385-393
Author(s):  
Amit Kumar Pal ◽  
Sagarika Ray ◽  
Jishnu Bhattacharya

Background: Bipolar affective disorder is an episodic illness characterized by fluctuating mood states. Association of dermatoglyphic traits with bipolar affective disorder has been observed in various studies. This study was undertaken to evaluate epidermal ridge patterns in bipolar patients as compared to healthy controls attending a super speciality district hospital in West Bengal. Context and purpose of study: Establishing dermatoglyphic parameters as biomarkers for early diagnosis and consequently, prompt intervention in bipolar affective disorder will ensure a greater scope of recovery, and thus promote a better quality of life for the individual as well as lower the burden of disease for the society. Methods: Quantitative dermatoglyphic parameters namely, Total Finger Ridge Count (TFRC), Total A-B Ridge Count (TABRC), and ATD Angle of 100 bipolar patients were compared to 100 age and gender matched healthy controls. Results: Statistically significant differences were found on comparing the dermatoglyphic parameters between cases and controls. TFRC was found to be decreased while ATD angle was increased in bipolar cases, as compared to the control group. However, no significant change was observed in TABRC between the two groups. Conclusions: This study found a significant association between dermatoglyphic pattern anomalies and the development of bipolarity. This may offer a scope of primordial prevention of bipolar disorder in future. Key words: Dermatoglyphics, ridge pattern, bipolar disorder, Total Finger Ridge Count (TFRC), Total A-B Ridge Count (TABRC), ATD angle.


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