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Greater Positive Schizotype Relates To Reduced N100 Activity During Rejection Scenes.
Neuropsychologia, 61:280-290, 2014
Date : 17/03/2015
Author Information
Uploaded by : Dan
Uploaded on : 17/03/2015
Subject : Neuroscience
Social anxiety due to rejection sensitivity (RS) exacerbates psychosis-like experiences in the general
population. While reduced dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) activity during social rejection in high
schizotypy has suggested self-distancing from rejection, earlier stages of mental processing such as feature
encoding could also contribute to psychosis-like experiences. This study aimed to determine the stage of
mental processing of social rejection that relates to positive schizotypy. Forty-one healthy participants were
assessed for schizotypy and RS. Event-related potential amplitudes (ERPs) were measured at frontal, temporal
and parieto-occipital sites and their cortical sources (dACC, temporal pole and lingual gyrus) at early (N100)
and late (P300 and late slow wave, LSW) timeframes during rejection, acceptance and neutral scenes. ERPs
were compared between social interaction types. Correlations were performed between positive schizotypy
(defined as the presence of perceptual aberrations, hallucinatory experiences and magical thinking), RS and
ERPs during rejection. Amplitude was greater during rejection than acceptance or neutral conditions at the
dACC-P300, parieto-occipital-P300, dACC-LSW and frontal-LSW. RS correlated positively with positive
schizotypy. Reduced dACC N100 activity during rejection correlated with greater positive schizotypy and
RS. Reduced dACC N100 activity and greater RS independently predicted positive schizotypy. An N100 deficit
that indicates reduced feature encoding of rejection scenes increases with greater positive schizotypy and RS.
Higher RS shows that a greater tendency to misattribute ambiguous social situations as rejecting also
increases with positive schizotypy. These two processes, namely primary bottom-up sensory processing and
secondary misattribution of rejection, combine to increase psychosis-like experiences.
This resource was uploaded by: Dan