Mechanisms of vocal emotion impairment in schizophrenia
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Mechanisms underlying vocal emotion impairments in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (MECH-SB).
IRAS ID
188212
Contact name
Rachel L. C. Mitchell
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
King's College London
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
One of the great daily challenges we face is the need to understand the emotional intentions of people we interact with. The study we propose will concentrate on the emotion signals conveyed by tone of voice – ‘it’s not what you say, but how you say it’. In particular, our study aims to discover more about the mental processes that influence the ability to understand emotional intonation, the mechanisms that cause impairments in different populations, and what the consequences are for the well-being of people whose emotion recognition skills are impaired.
In research on schizophrenia, symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations have traditionally attracted more attention. However, emotion-related symptoms, including flat affect, are increasingly recognised as the more debilitating and resistant to treatment. Similarly, in bipolar disorder impaired emotion perception, is a rate-limiting factor to patient integration within society and the workplace. So far, our research has demonstrated that people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder may find understanding tone of voice signals difficult because they don’t use the brain mechanism normally used to process this information, and that impaired sensory processing may be an important element of this. Our new study will examine similarities and differences between impaired perception of emotional intonation in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. We will do this by integrating the results from a series of tasks that assess the ability to understand vocal emotion, and tasks that assess the perception of more basic auditory cues believed to be important for creating patterns of emotional intonation (e.g. rhythm).
Such work is important, because these impairments can lead to difficulties in interpersonal communication, reducing social participation and increasing loneliness in already vulnerable groups. Our ultimate aim is to build more comprehensive models of impairment that will provide concrete targets for tackling the root causes and reducing their effects.REC name
London - Surrey Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/LO/1826
Date of REC Opinion
19 Nov 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion