P.1.j. Basic and clinical neuroscience − Cognitive neuroscience to perform as fast and as well as the other two groups, the short alleled subjects have to make up for their loss of function in the striatum with a higher activation in the prefrontal cortex. However, with rising difficulty, short alleled subjects can not make up for their loss of function of the NO Synthase, and this leads to an increased error rate in switching set. This in turn could be used as a new measurement in the search for impulsive behavior as an endophenotype. References [1] Reif A., et al. 2006. A neuronal nitric oxide synthase (NOS-I) haplotype associated with schizophrenia modifies prefrontal cortex function. Mol Psychiatry 11(3):286–300. [2] Reif, A., et al. 2009. Influence of functional variant of neuronal nitric oxide synthase on impulsive behaviors in humans. Archives of General Psychiatry 66(1):41−50. Disclosure statement: This abstract ist financially supported by a grant from the DFG (Grant RTG 1253).
P.1.j.014 Variability in P3a index automatic orienting response dysfunction in schizophrenic patients without auditory hallucinations M. Rabella Figueras1 ° , E.M. Grasa Bello2 , S. Mart´ınez-Horta3 , R. Fern´andez de Bobadilla3 , I. Corripio Collado2 , A. Keymer Gausset1 , M. Serra Blasco2 , J. Sanju´an Arias4 , F. Artigas P´erez5 , V. P´erez Sol`a6 , J. Riba Serrano7 1 Institut de Recerca. Hospital Santa Creu Sant Pau, Psychiatry. UAB., Barcelona, Spain; 2 Institut de Recerca. Hospital Santa Creu Sant Pau, Psychiatry. CIBERSAM. UAB., Barcelona, Spain; 3 Institut de Recerca. Hospital Santa Creu Sant Pau, Neurology. Movement Disorders Unit. UAB., Barcelona, Spain; 4 Hospital Cl´ınic Universitari. Universitat Valencia, Psychiatry. CIBERSAM, Valencia, Spain; 5 Institut Investigacions Biom`ediques Barcelona. CSIC, Neurochemistry and Neuropharmacology. CIBERSAM, Barcelona, Spain; 6 Parc de Salut Mar. INAD, Psychiatry. CIBERSAM., Barcelona, Spain; 7 Institut de Recerca. Hospital Santa Creu Sant Pau, Human Experimental Neuropsychopharmacology. IIB-Sant Pau. CIBERSAM, Barcelona, Spain Purpose: Schizophrenia is characterized by marked disturbances of attention and information processing. Patients experience difficulty focusing on relevant cues and avoiding distraction by irrelevant stimuli. However, contradictory results have been reported in studies of event-related brain potential (ERP) responses to stimuli in attentional tasks. Using the auditory oddball paradigm, the centro-parietal P3b component of the ERP which appears after task-relevant stimuli detection has been consistently reported to be reduced in schizophrenics [1]. However, mixed results have been observed for the novelty P3a, a fronto-central component elicited by task-irrelevant stimuli. Some studies have found novelty P3a amplitude reductions [1] suggesting a disturbed involuntary orienting response in schizophrenia. However, others have observed higher amplitudes than in healthy subjects [2], suggesting increased salience of irrelevant stimuli in certain patients. Given the clinical heterogeneity of the schizophrenia spectrum disorders, we wished to explore if the presence/absence of persistent auditory hallucinations, an important phenotype associated with abnormal emotional processing, could account for the contradictory results reported in the literature.
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Methods: P3b and P3a has been studied in 3 groups: (a) 11 schizophrenic patients presenting chronic auditory hallucinations (AH+); (b) 7 schizophrenic patients free of auditory hallucinations (AH−); and (c) 10 healthy controls. An auditory odball paradigm containing frequent, infrequent (target) and novel taskirrelevant stimuli was administered. Participants were instructed to ignore the frequent and novel stimuli and to respond as quickly and accurately as possible to the target stimuli. Responses were given by button press. The electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded from 19 standard scalp sites (Fp1/2, F3/4, C3/4, T3/4, T5/6, P3/4, O1/2, F7/8, Fz, Cz, Pz) referenced to the two mastoid leads. Results: Results showed that compared to controls, both AH− and AH+ schizophrenic patients showed reduced amplitudes of the P3b. No differences were found between the patient groups for this component. Regarding the P3a, AH− patients showed reduced amplitudes of this component at when compared to controls. On other hand, AH+ had P3a amplitudes that did not differ from those of controls and that were significantly larger than those of the AH− patients. Thus, whereas the P3b was similarly reduced in the two patient groups, the amplitude of the P3a was not homogeneous in the schizophrenic population and depended on the presence or absence of auditory hallucinations. Conclusions: The above results indicate that whereas cognitive processes indexed by the P3b such as updating of working memory and stimulus categorization appear to be impaired in most schizophrenic patients, the automatic orienting response to novel stimuli is preserved in patients experiencing auditory hallucinations. These findings suggest that different neurocognitive deficits may be responsible for the variability in perceptual symptoms within the schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. Additionally, they support the notion that ‘aberrant salience’ may be involved in the genesis of certain psychotic symptoms such as persistent auditory hallucinations. References [1] Corti˜nas, M., Corral, M.J., Garrido, G., Garolera, M., Pajares, M., & Escera, C. (2008). Reduced novelty-P3 associated with increased behavioral distractibility in schizophrenia. Biological psychology, 78(3), 253–260. [2] Schall, U., Catts, S.V., Karayanidis, F., & Ward, P.B. (1999). Auditory event-related potential indices of fronto-temporal information processing in schizophrenia syndromes: valid outcome prediction of clozapine therapy in a three-year follow-up. The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, 2(02), 83−93. Disclosure statement: This work has been partly supported by grants P82 (CIBERSAM), 091230/091231 (Fundaci´o Marat´o TV3), FIS 08/0475 (ISCIII, Spain) and IMI grant agreement 115008 (NEWMEDS).
P.1.j.015 The effects of brain radiotherapy on facial emotion recognition and association with hippocampal and frontal dosimetry E. Y¨uksek1 ° , S. Eroz2 , A. Yassa1 , D. Akturk3 , F. Zakirov1 , F. Engin Akcam1 , M. Emul1 1 Istanbul University Cerrahpasa Faculty of Medicine, Psychiatry, Istanbul, Turkey; 2 Istanbul University Cerrahpasa Faculty of Medicine, Radiation Oncology, Istanbul, Turkey; 3 Istanbul University Cerrahpasa Faculty of Medicine, Medical Student, Istanbul, Turkey Background: The main choice in treatment of primary and/or metastatic tumors in brain is widely accepted as whole brain radiation therapy. The influence of brain radiotherapy on neurocognition is a major concern [1]. Social cognition is a mental
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process in the meaning of social interaction and the recognition of facial emotion is a domain of social cognition [2]. Thus, we aimed to investigate the early effect of whole brain radiotherapy on facial emotion recognition ability. Methods: Thirteen patients with various brain tumors primary or metastatic (postoperative glioblastoma multiforme (n = 2), postoperative anaplastic ependymoma (n = 1), postoperative anaplastic oligodendroglioma (n = 2), meningioma (n = 2), solitary brain metastasis from lung adenocarcinoma (n = 3), small cell lung cancer for prophylactic whole brain radiotherapy (n = 3) were recruited in the department of radiation oncology who had Karnofski Performance Scale >80 points (normal activity with efforts; some signs or symptoms of disease) and expected survival at least 1 year were enrolled in the study. Organs at risk and the doses received by the target volume were assessed with Dose Volume Histograms. Additionally, 13 age and gender matched healthy controls were participated in the study. Beck Depression and Anxiety Inventory and the Facial Emotion Recognition Test by using a set of photographs were performed at the beginning and post radiotherapy. The test included the photos of four male and four female models (totally 56 mixed photos) with happy, surprised, fearful, sad, angry, disgusted, and neutral facial expressions from Ekman & Friesen’s series. Results: The mean age was not significantly different between patients and healthy controls (48.85±08.43 vs48.54±08.86). There were no significant differences among education between groups. The severity of depression (16.40±12.16 vs 04.00±02.38 points) and anxiety (14.47±11.96 vs 04.54±03.30 points) were significantly higher in patients. The only significance according to facial emotion recognition rate between initial phase of patients and healthy controls was identifying neutral facial emotion (p = 0.002). The patients after brain radiotherapy had significantly better accuracy rate of recognizing fear facial emotions (p = 0.039). A positive correlation was detected between bilateral frontal radiotherapy dose and improvement in identifying surprised facial emotion (p = 0.050 and r = 0.553) while no correlation was found between hippocampus and radiation dosimetry. Conclusion: Brain radiation induced injury to hippocampus which is accused for decline in neurocognitive functions is a contemporary debate in literature, in preclinical and clinical practice. The proposed neural circuit underlying social affiliation and social behavior include amygdala-periamygdalar cortex and part of prefrontal cortex [3]. This study is the first that investigated the effects of cranial irradiation on facial emotion recognition ability and compares this ability with healthy controls. Interestingly, in the early phase the patients seem to be improved in fear facial emotion after brain radiotherapy without sparing cognition specific regions as hippocampus and frontal regions. However, the late neurotoxicity of cranial irradiation which may occur several months to years is another issue while considering social cognition. References [1] Gondi, V., Tome, W.A., Mehta, M.P., 2010. Why avoid the hippocampus? A comprehensive review. Radiotherapy and oncology: journal of the European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology 97, 370–376. [2] Martino, D.J., Strejilevich, S.A., Fassi, G., Marengo, E., Igoa, A., 2011. Theory of mind and facial emotion recognition in euthymic bipolar i and bipolar ii disorders. Psychiatry research 189, 379–384. [3] Kirkpatrick, B., Buchanan, R.W., 1990. The neural basis of the deficit syndrome of schizophrenia. The Journal of nervous and mental disease 178, 545–555.
P.1.j.016 The effect of acute stress and cortisol on encoding and retrieval: a systematic review of the literature with meta-analysis C.S. Symonds1 ° , C.C. Henson2 , J.F.W. Deakin3 , I.M. Anderson3 1 University of Manchester, IBBM 3.304 Jean MacFarlane Bldg, Manchester, United Kingdom; 2 Salford Royal Infirmary, Translational Medicine Dept of Gastroenterology, Salford, United Kingdom; 3 University of Manchester, NPU G3.700 Stopford Bldg, Manchester, United Kingdom Background: An acute rise in corticosteroids has been shown to affect memory; however the evidence to date is unclear, with studies reporting both improved and impaired declarative memory [1]. The timing of the rise in cortisol (prior to encoding or prior to retrieval); emotional aspects of the neurocognitive task and the method by which the cortisol rise was induced (exogenous drug administration or endogenous, stress-induced) also appear to affect participants ability to recall words. This systematic review with meta-analysis aimed to examine the acute effects of corticosteroids on declarative memory in 25 studies of healthy volunteers. Methods: Medical databases and citation lists of included studies and relevant reviews were searched to identify trials using a priori selection criteria, namely randomised controlled trials of healthy volunteers with an acute cortisol rise induced by exogenous drug administration or stress task as well as encoding or retrieval were assessed on quantified tests of word learning. ‘The acute effect of cortisol’ was defined as either encoding or retrieving the experimental material within 4 hours of the induced cortisol rise, to reflect the action of cortisol on mineralocorticoid and glucocorticoid receptors prior to products of genomic transcription demonstrating an effect. Meta-analysis was performed using the generic inverse variance method displayed with heterogeneity to allow pooling of studies which measured outcomes on different scales. The effect of neutral, positive and negative stimuli material was also examined as subgroup analyses. Results: From 5082 potential papers, 25 papers met the criteria. The meta-analysis demonstrated that raised cortisol prior to retrieval (12 studies, SMD = −0.10 [−0.54, −0.33]; Z = 0.47, P = 0.64; c2 = 61.79, df 11, P < 0.000001, I2 = 82%), but not encoding, adversely affected performance in memory tasks. The effect was most consistently seen following an exogenous, drug-induced rise in cortisol levels and with the retrieval of neutral words, with a trend towards emotional words being unaffected by the adverse effects of raised cortisol (4 studies, SMD = −0.25 [−0.53, 0.04]; Z = 1.68, P = 0.09; c2 = 1.73, df 5, P = 0.63, I2 = 0%). However, there were too few studies to draw firm conclusions regarding the effect of exogenous versus endogenous cortisol and the role of emotional material. Conclusions: The timing of the acute rise in cortisol related to encoding is important with a significant result only being found when there was a drug induced, exogenous rise of cortisol postencoding and pre-retrieval. This is most likely to represent a nongenomic action of cortisol given the rapid onset of the effect. The impact of emotional content of memories in the context of acute stress needs to be studied further, and further work is necessary in other populations, especially in depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. References [1] Sauro, M.D., Jorgensen, R.S., Teal Pedlow, C., 2003. Stress, Glucocorticoids, and Memory: A Meta-analytic Review. Stress 6(4): 235–245.