BSI Research Units

Social And Affective Neurosciences Research Unit

Unit Leader: Dr. Patrick Johnston

Introduction:

In common with other primates, humans are intensely social animals and the co-evolution of brain and human (social) culture has lead to a situation whereby even at a very young age humans are tuned to the selective or preferential processing of socially relevant stimuli. There is a growing awareness that the same neural circuitry that mediates shared gaze in infants and their mothers may underlie the development of more complex social cognitive skills, forming our ability to understand other people's beliefs and intentions.

Emotion has traditionally been treated as a “poor cousin” by cognitive psychology - something that we all know is lurking around somewhere, but about which there has largely been some reticence in talking about. With the evolution from cognitive psychology to cognitive neuroscience - a science of cognition that firmly seeks to understand behaviour in terms of brain function, it has become increasingly clear that the false separation of cognition and emotion is untenable. This is particularly the case with regards to social cognition since social behaviour may often be strongly emotionally charged.

Problems in social and affective processes are also increasingly recognised as representing core features of a number of psychiatric disorders and neurological syndromes including schizophrenia and related conditions, depression, autism, Korsakoff's Syndrome, Williams Syndrome etc.

The Social and Affective Cognitive Neuroscience Unit therefore aims to address a variety of research questions relating to human emotion, and aspects of social behaviour including non-verbal communication and the ability to experience empathy and to understand other people's social intentions and motivational states. The unit further aims to elucidate the mechanisms of abnormal neural functioning relating to social cognitive and emotional processes in psychiatric and neurological conditions.

Key Members:

Dr Joseph Ciorciari

Mr. Luke A. Downey

Dr. Greg Murray

Dr. Andrew Pipingas

Professor Richard Silberstein

Professor Con Stough

Dr. Karen Hansen

Current Research Projects:

The role of the human mirror neuron system in social cognition.

Remediating facial emotion processing deficits in schizophrenia.

Face and facial emotion processing in children with autism.

Grants received:

Karayanidis, F., Michie, P., Nunn, K., Passfield, T., Johnston, P., (2003) Face and Facial expression processing in autism. Hunter Medical Research Institute $19,600.

Karayanidis, F., Michie, P., Johnston, P., (2003) Face and Facial expression processing in autism, University of Newcastle Research Grant Committee Project Grant $14,000.

Loughland C, Johnston P. (2002) Visual scanpaths to dynamic facial expression stimuli in schizophrenia (Viewpoint eye tracker). Hunter Medical Research Institute

Key Publications:

Byrne, T., Henskens, F., Johnston, P., & Katsikitis, M. (2003). FaceXpress: an integrated software suite for facial emotion stimulus manipulation and facial measurement. Methods of Psychological Research - Online, 8 (3), 97-111.

Johnston, P., Karayanidis, F., Devir, H., (2006) Facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia: no evidence for an emotion specific deficit using a differential deficit design. Psychiatry Research, 143 (1) 51-61.

Johnston, P., Stojanov, W., Devir, H., Schall, U., (2005) Functional MRI of facial emotion recognition deficits in schizophrenia and their electrophysiological correlates. European Journal of Neuroscience, 22 (5) 1221-1232

Johnston, P., McCabe, K., Schall, U., (2003) Differential susceptibility to performance degradation across categories of facial emotion - a model confirmation. Biological Psychology 63 (1): 45-58 APR 2003.

Johnston, P., Carr, V., (2002). Facial affect recognition deficits in schizophrenia: a case for applying facial measurement techniques. In Katsikitis, M.(Ed.), The Human Face: Measurement and Meaning. Kluwer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, pages 119-130.

Johnston, P., Katsikitis, M., Carr, V., (2001) A generalised deficit can account for problems in facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia. Biological Psychology, 58 (3), 203-227.

Wheaton KJ, Pipingas A, Silberstein RB, Puce A. Human neural responses elicited to observing the actions of others. Vis Neurosci 2001;18(3):401-6.

Conference Abstracts

Johnston, P., Katsikitis, M., Carr, V., (2001) A neural network approach to facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia: a generalised deficit can explain poorer performance to negative emotions. International Congress on Schizophrenia Research Meeting, Whistler, Canada, May 2001. Schizophrenia Research 49 (1-2): 136-136 Sp. Iss. SI Suppl. S APR 15 2001.

Johnston, P., Schall, U., Carr, V. (2004) Impaired facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia (2): fMRI evidence for a generalised deficit. The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry, 5(Suppl. 1), 67.

Johnston, P., Katsikitis, M., Carr, V., (2001) Modelling facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia. Presented at the 7th World Congress on Biological Psychiatry, Berlin, Germany, July, 2001.World Journal of Biological Psychiatry 2 (Suppl. 1): 233.

McCabe, C., Loughland, C., Cohen, M., Johnston, P., Lewin, T., Carr, V. (2006) Remediation of facial affect decoding and visual scanpath deficits in schizophrenia. Australia and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 40, A119-A119 Suppl. 2.

Loughland, C., McCabe, C., Johnston, P., Lewin, T., Carr, V (2006) Are visuo-cognitive disturbances in first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients evidence for a vulnerability marker? Australia and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 40, A119-A119 Suppl. 2.

Schall, U., Johnston, P., Stojanov, W., Devir, H., Carr, V., (2004) Impaired facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia (1): Neurophysiological evidence for a generalised deficit. The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry, 5(Suppl. 1), 67.

Sercombe, A., Karayanidis, F., Michie, P., Passfield, T., Johnston, P., (2003) Face and facial emotion processing in children with autism. Australian Journal of Psychology 55: 109-109 Suppl. S 2003

Further Information

Contact

Dr. Patrick Johnston

Social and Affective Cognitive Neurosciences

Research Unit

Brain Sciences Institute

Ph: +61 3 9214 5946

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