Keywords

olfaction, empathy, olfactory, hedonics, schizophrenia

Abstract

Empathy represents one multifaceted component of social cognition that is thought to be significantly impaired in individuals with schizophrenia. Psychophysical tasks of smell identification and hedonic processing of pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant odors share common neural networks involved in empathy. Therefore, we investigated the relationship between odor identification, odor ratings, and self-reported empathy in 25 outpatients with schizophrenia and 25 nonpsychiatric individuals. Group differences on empathy scores and unirhinal smell identification performance (with hedonic and intensity ratings) were examined, along with the relationships between smell identification scores, self-reported empathy, and schizophrenia symptomatology. The preliminary findings suggest that individuals with schizophrenia display significant differences from controls on measures of self-reported empathy, odor identification, and hedonic ratings of odors. Deficits in self-reported global and affective empathy were influenced by group and sex, whereas cognitive empathy was reduced across all patients in comparison to controls. Patients displayed reduced unirhinal odor identification accuracy for pleasant but not neutral or unpleasant odors in comparison to controls. Central to the overall aim of the current study, a robust positive correlation was observed between left- and right-nostril hedonic ratings for pleasant odors and self-reported global and affective empathy scores across all participants. In patients, we also found a statistical trend between affective empathy and left-nostril identification accuracy across all odors. Collectively, the results lend support to the role of olfactory-limbic brain regions in the hedonic processing of odors and suggest that aberrant performance observed in schizophrenia may be related to abnormalities in the anatomical and physiological substrates that also subserve empathy.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2009

Advisor

Bedwell, Jeffrey

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

College

College of Sciences

Department

Psychology

Degree Program

Psychology

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0002759

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0002759

Language

English

Release Date

July 2010

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)

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