Respuesta subjetiva a estímulos emocionales en psicosis aguda

Abstract

Along last years, people with psychosis have been postulated to process emotional information in a differente way compared to people without psychiatric disease. Aberrant interpretation of the emotionally relevant stimuli would affect the interpretation of reality and , ultimately , in the development of symptoms, including delirium. The aim of this study was to compare the subjective response to emotional visual stimuli in subjects with acute psychosis, subjects with psychosis in stabilization phase and subjects without psychiatric pathology; so as to relate emotional reactivity with the performance in a classic task of social cognition: emotion recognition. To reach this purpose, we have conducted two experimental designs: a crosssectional one and a longitudinal one, to compare the subjective response to emotional stimuli. In the cross-sectional design, 121 subjects with psychosis was assessed: 53 people with acute psychosis, 52 people with stabilized psychosis; and 46 people without psychiatric disorders. In the longitudinal design, 28 patients with psychosis were assessed at the time of psychotic decompensation and, then, at the time of stability, between 6 and 12 months from decompensation. A battery of pictures was used in every assessment, selected from the International Affective Picture System and PennEmotion Recognition Test. Subjects had to rate the pictures in valence and arousal, using theSelf Assessment Manikin. After collecting data from the subjective response to affective stimuli, it was also conducted a task of emotion recognition. It was found that people with acute psychosis refered different valence and arousal to emotional and neutral pictures compared to people without psychiatric pathology. These differences would disappear in stabilization phase. People with acute psychosis rated lower scores of arousal to emotional images (less activation) and refered more arousal to neutral stimuli; compared with people without pathology. It was also found a poorer performance on the emotion recognition task in acute phase and an improvement in the performace with simpthom remission.