Social aversive conditioning in youth at clinical high risk for psychosis and with psychosis: An ERP study

Background: Social cognition and emotion processing are compromised in schizophrenia. Disruptions in these domains may also be present during the psychosis-risk state. Aversive conditioning is an established translational research paradigm to investigate affective reactivity and learning. Using an aversive conditioning ERP paradigm with social cues, we examined whether psychosis patients and at-risk youths differentially respond to aversively conditioned faces. Methods: Participants (ages 10-30) were enrolled into three demographically-matched groups: clinical risk for psychosis (CR, n = 32), psychosis (PS, n = 26), and healthy control (HC, n = 33). EEGs were recorded during a delay aversive conditioning task in which three neutral faces were paired with an aversive tone at 100%, 50% and 0% contingencies. Analysis focused on group differences in ERP peaks representing visual processing (occipital P120), emotional valence (frontal VPP), and directed attention (parietal-occipital P300), for dimensions of aversiveness (100% vs. 0%) and unpredictability (50% vs. 100% + 0%). Results: HC, but not CR or PS, showed increased P300 amplitude to aversive vs. non-aversive conditioned stimuli. CR, but not PS or HC, showed increased VPP amplitude to unpredictable vs. predictable stimuli. Conclusions: PS and CR both fail to allocate appropriate salience to social cues that are predictably aversive. CR, but not PS exhibit heightened emotional reactivity to social cues that are of uncertain salience. Clinical risk for schizophrenia may involve neural abnormalities distinct from both healthy and fully-established disease states. Published by Elsevier B.V.