Emotion recognition and genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia

Background: Epidemiological studies of schizophrenia suggest that this disorder has a substantial genetic component. Cognitive and social abilities, as well as the volumes of brain regions involved in emotion processing, have been found to be distributed along a continuum when comparing patients, siblings and controls, with siblings showing intermediate scores. Aims: To establish whether facial expression recognition is impaired in unaffected siblings of patients. Method: Emotion and gender recognition were evaluated in a three-group pre-post study design in drug-naive patients with first-episode schizophrenia (n=40) and their unaffected siblings (n=30) compared with controls (n=26). Results: Patients and their healthy siblings showed impaired emotion recognition but normal gender recognition compared with controls. Patients' performance did not improve despite effective clinical stabilisation. Conclusions: Impaired performance in healthy siblings and time stability in patients provides evidence of impairment of facial emotion recognition as an actual phenotype of schizophrenia.