%0 Journal Article
%T Schizophrenia as a Disorder of Social Communication
%A Cynthia Gayle Wible
%J Schizophrenia Research and Treatment
%D 2012
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2012/920485
%X Evidence is reviewed for the existence of a core system for moment-to-moment social communication that is based on the perception of dynamic gestures and other social perceptual processes in the temporal-parietal occipital junction (TPJ), including the posterior superior temporal sulcus (PSTS) and surrounding regions. Overactivation of these regions may produce the schizophrenic syndrome. The TPJ plays a key role in the perception and production of dynamic social, emotional, and attentional gestures for the self and others. These include dynamic gestures of the body, face, and eyes as well as audiovisual speech and prosody. Many negative symptoms are characterized by deficits in responding within these domains. Several properties of this system have been discovered through single neuron recording, brain stimulation, neuroimaging, and the study of neurological impairment. These properties map onto the schizophrenic syndrome. The representation of dynamic gestures is multimodal (auditory, visual, and tactile), matching the predominant hallucinatory categories in schizophrenia. Inherent in the perceptual signal of gesture representation is a computation of intention, agency, and anticipation or expectancy (for the self and others). The neurons are also tuned or biased to rapidly detect threat-related emotions. I review preliminary evidence that overactivation of this system can result in schizophrenia. 1. Introduction Is there a system for dynamic moment to moment social communication in the brain? Social perception has now been extensively studied in humans and nonhuman primates and is defined as follows: ¡°¡­the initial states of evaluating the social communicative intentions of others by analysis of eye-gaze direction, facial expressions, body movements, and other types of biological motion.¡± [1]. Recent evidence suggests that such a system does exist and that abnormal activity in this system may produce the symptoms and cognitive deficits that comprise the syndrome of schizophrenia. A posterior system will be described whose activity may correspond to or underlie the perceptual experience of conversing and interacting with others. Until recently, communication has primarily been studied through language research. This line of research has focused mainly on the structure of the representation and the neural basis of language input (graphemes, phonemes), the internal lexical/semantic representation, and language output (writing and speech production) and has made significant progress in understanding language. 2. Communication Involves Not Only Language
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/schizort/2012/920485/