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Parahippocampus Mediates Association Between Olfactory Identification and Anhedonia in Individuals with Schizotypy

Dec 09, 2015

Empirical findings have established a link between olfactory deficits and negative symptoms in schizophrenia. However, it is not known whether olfactory function is associated with hedonic traits in individuals with schizotypy.

Dr. CHAN Raymond and his team from Institute of Psychology of Chinese Academy of Sciences have conducted a study to explore the correlations between olfactory function and hedonic traits in individuals with schizotypy. They have identified a group of 17 individuals with schizotypy and 18 matched individuals without schizotypy from an original pool of 1780 college students. They administered the Sniffin’ Stick Test to all the participants to test their olfactory threshold, odour discrimination and odour identification. After taking the Sniffin’ Stick Test, all of them undertook a structural imaging brain scan for grey matter volume measurements.

The researchers found that while individuals with schizotypy had normal olfactory function comparing to the matched controls, their odour identification ability was negatively correlated with physical and social anhedonia. The volume of the right parahippocampal gyrus was significantly associated with odour identification ability, and negatively associated with physical and social anhedonia. More importantly, they found that odour identification ability influenced anhedonia through its mediation effect on the right parahippocampal gyrus in individuals with schizotypy. No such relationship was found in controls.

These preliminary findings highlight the unique role of olfaction in identifying individuals with anhedonia. Dr. CHAN’s team is now undertaking further examination of olfactory hedonic processing in individuals with schizotypy and patients with schizophrenia in order to further tease out the underlying neural mechanism and association of olfactory function and anhedonia in these people.

This study was supported by grants from the Strategic Priority Research Programme (B) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Science Foundation of China, the Beijing Training Project for the Leading Talents in S & T, the Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of psychology of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The paper is available online in Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging.

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