A pilot investigation is proposed, in which cerebral pathophysiology in schizophrenic patients will be related to emotional aspects of their family environments. Fifteen schizophrenic patients and their non-psychiatrically ill siblings will participate in dichotic listening tests of cerebral laterality. Family emotional environment will be measured with the affective style index which provides measures of the degree to which parents overtly criticize or intrude into the patient's inner life. The dichotic tests have previously been shown to reflect emotion-related changes in regional brain functioning. Previous work with affective style suggests it is related to both onset and course of schizophenic disorders. The proposed pilot work brings together these two areas of investigation for the first time. We propose to test the following two hypotheses: 1) that schizophrenic patients show abnormal physiological response to emotional stimulation, as compared to non-schizophrenic siblings and 2) that this abnormality is specifically related to negative affective styles of interpersonal relating within the patients' families.
| Becker, D F; Doane, J A; Wexler, B E (1993) Effects of emotion on perceptual asymmetry in adolescent inpatients with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 32:318-21;discussion 322-3 |
