Disturbances of emotional prosody in schizophrenia

Disturbances in understanding and expression of emotional prosody of speech (aprosodia) belong to frequent but rarely described symptoms of schizophrenia, that negatively influence the life quality of patients. The role of prosody in the process of verbal communication is to complement and emphasize the language (linguistic prosody) and affective (emotional prosody) aspects of the spoken announcements. The authors review literature, including studies on functional brain imaging, and analyze profile and ground of the disturbances in the emotional prosody in patients with schizophrenia. Similarly to patients with damage to the right hemisphere, the speech of schizophrenia patients often is monotonous and deprived of emotional coloring, despite preserved experiencing of appropriate emotions, similarly to healthy subjects. In the acoustic speech analysis of patients with schizophrenic psychosis, reduced fundamental frequency of the utterance, clinically defined as aprosodia, was showed. It was noticed that the problems in identifying emotions concern mainly negative emotions and that bigger defects were demonstrated by men. The authors emphasize the need to recognize and include appropriate therapeutic treatments in prosody disturbances, which aim is to improve the well-being and social functioning of the patients.