Face tuning in schizophrenia: underwriting brain networks

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Andreas Jochen Fallgatter; Professorin Dr. Marina Pavlova
• Subject Area: Clinical Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 450096323

Faces represent valuable daily life signals for social cognition, effective interpersonal interaction and non-verbal communication. The project is aimed at investigation of processing of face-like non-face images and underwriting brain networks in schizophrenia (SZ). With this purpose in mind, we intend to use recently created face-like non-face images (such as Face-n-Food and Face-n-Thing displays). The primary advantage of these images is that single components do not explicitly trigger face-specific processing, whereas in images commonly used for investigating face perception (such as photographs or depictions), the mere occurrence of typical cues already implicates face presence. Previous work is mainly restricted to localization of brain regions underlying face processing. The important rationale for this proposal is a desire to uncover the time courses and dynamic topography of underwriting brain networks in typically developing individuals and SZ patients in order to eventually establish a social cognitive profile typical of SZ. The focus of this part of the project will be set on investigation of the links between the face tuning and other social-cognitive abilities such as reading of body and eyes language that constitute a core of social competence as well as on possible communication between brain networks supporting these abilities. Our research concept represents a challenging combination of multimodal brain imaging (fMRI providing for high spatial resolution and MEG providing for high temporal resolution) with visual psychophysics. By using brain imaging along with visual psychophysics, we plan to clarify: (i) whether neural networks underlying face sensitivity are aberrant in SZ, in particular, in the sense of neural communication and functional intra- and interhemispheric brain connectivity; (ii) how differences in behavioral measures of performance relate to possible differences in the underlying brain networks, and (iii) whether alterations in brain connectivity in SZ are sex specific. In addition, we intend to uncover functional division of labor in the key hubs of the social brain, and undertake precise functional mapping of the indispensable components of the social brain, divergence in their functional subdivisions, and their contribution to neuronal communication between the networks underlying face tuning. The outcome will substantially contribute to our understanding of face processing and other social cognitive abilities in SZ.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants