Alteration of Semantic Networks during Swear Words Processing in Schizophrenia

Objective Positive symptoms, such as delusion and hallucination, commonly include negative emotional content in schizophrenia. We investigated the neural basis implicated during the processing of strong negative emotional words in patients with schizophrenia. Methods In our study, 35 patients with schizophrenia and 19 healthy controls were recruited, and the participants were asked to passively view the words that contained swearing and neutral content during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Results Patients with schizophrenia, compared to healthy controls, showed hypoactivation to the swear and neutral words stimuli in the left inferior frontal gyrus, left middle frontal gyrus, and left angular/supramarginal gyrus. More specifically, patients with remitted schizophrenia were found to have greater activation to the stimuli in the left middle/inferior frontal gyrus than patients with active schizophrenia. Furthermore, in the analysis of regions of interests, the left inferior and middle frontal gyrus activity was related to the severity of positive symptoms, including delusion and suspiciousness. Conclusion Our results suggest that patients with schizophrenia have difficulty in semantic processing and inhibitory control of swear words, and these abnormalities may be connected with the severity of positive symptoms.