Schizophrenia has long been known to be a very complicated and poorly understood cognitive disorder. To attempt to understand the differences in emotional processing in schizophrenic patients, psychologists use physiological parameters to quantify psychological activity. Researchers Peterman et al. performed a study in which Galvanic Skin Response (GSR or EDA) and Facial Electromyography (fEMG) were recorded in schizophrenic and control subjects in response to social stimuli to assess the differences in adaptive emotional response. To measure these signals, they used wireless BIOPAC BioNomadix amplifiers, one for GSR (BN-PPGED) and two for fEMG (BN-EMG2). The participants were asked to view a block of images of the same category (e.g., social positive, non-social negative, etc.), then select a positivity response (valence rating) as to how they felt about the images. Subjects viewed several blocks of images to evoke differing responses. The self-reported valence ratings were paired to physiological data acquired with wireless BioNomadix transmitters. The GSR and fEMG were collected with an MP150 data acquisition system, and the data was analyzed with AcqKnowledge software. Researchers found that the Schizophrenic subjects responded similarly to the controls in the valence ratings, but their GSR and fEMG data diverged significantly. The Schizophrenic subjects showed a stronger overall GSR response to the images; however they did not show an effect by the sociality of the pictures. The fEMG response was also greater overall in the Schizophrenic group, but also did not vary by sociality. The results provide physiological background to the disrupted self-awareness of emotion processing in Schizophrenics. The complexity of emotion processing in cognitive disorders continues to elude us and to pave new avenues for scientific study. Along with the BioNomadix modules used in the study, BIOPAC Systems offers several wireless, wearable physiological data acquisition and analysis systems for psychophysiological research.
