Mentalizing Deficit In Schizophrenia

Deficit in the ability to attribute mental states of another person such as thoughts, beliefs and intentions, also referred to as ‘Theory of mind’ (ToM) or “mentalization”, is a key component in the functional impairment of social cognition in schizophrenia. The difficulty of patients with schizophrenia to interpret emotional expression, social contexts and mental state of others can result in social withdrawal and social isolation, and effect daily functioning. This proposal aims to characterize the gene expression profile of mentalizing emotion in the blood of patients with schizophrenia to underlying the molecular mechanism of mentalizing deficit in schizophrenia.

In the first phase of the current study, we compared the ability of persons