Imaging the “social brain” in schizophrenia: A systematic review of neuroimaging studies of social reward and punishment
Section snippets
Methods
We conducted a systematic review of the literature related to the functional neuroimaging of social reward and punishment in SSD. We structured our review according the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA; Moher et al., 2009) guidelines.
Results
Our search returned a total of 761 publications, with 493 remaining after removing duplicates. Three of the 493 articles were found through additional sources (e.g., in the citations of another included article). A total of 461 articles were excluded after reviewing the title/abstract, leaving 31 articles remaining. Of these, 20 articles were excluded after the full text review (see Supplementary Materials for reasons for exclusion). A total of 11 articles were included after reviewing the full
Discussion
In this systematic review of the published literature, we identified 11 studies examining neural activity in the context of social reward and punishment in SSD. These studies spanned a variety of passive and interactive paradigms in over 400 participants across 7 years. We summarized key brain structures implicated in within- and between-group differences in neural activity, highlighting those conceptualized as comprising the “social interaction” network, including mentalizing regions (TPJ,
Conclusions
In this review we summarized the current state of the literature examining the neural correlates of social reward and punishment processing in SSD. We described key findings, focusing on methodological differences across studies. We then summarized the patterns of neural activation within (e.g., reward vs. punishment) and between (SSD vs. control) groups. Finally, we made recommendations for future research focused on achieving balance between ecological validity and experimental control.
We
Funding
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
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2021, Psychiatry Research - NeuroimagingCitation Excerpt :Individuals with SA had been found to have structural (e.g., cortical thickness of the superior frontal gyrus, Wang et al., 2014) and functional (e.g., activation in the superior temporal gyrus during face emotion processing, Germine et al., 2011; resting-state FC between the retrosplenial cortex and the right fusiform gyrus, Yang et al., 2019) alterations of the social brain regions. A recent meta-analysis showed that these alterations of the social brain regions are correlated with the impairments of experiencing pleasure in social interactions in schizophrenia patients (Mow et al., 2020). Although these brain regions were found to lie within the social brain network (including mentalizing, mirror neuron and reward network), the role of the brain network for complex social behavior and social dysfunctions in individuals with SA still remains unclear.