J Korean Neuropsychiatr Assoc.  2011 Jul;50(4):273-279.

Recognition of Musical Nuance in Patients with Schizophrenia

• Cho UJ
• Lee JS
• Son JI
• Seo HJ
• Han YK
• Park JH
• Lee DE
• Kim CY

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
Emotion perception deficit has long been suggested to be one of the core features of schizophrenia. Although there have been several studies examining responses to facial expressions, few studies addressed music emotion recognition. The aim of this study was to examine the difference in emotion recognition in music between normal subjects and patients with schizophrenia.
METHODS
Twenty pieces of music were presented to 43 patients with chronic schizophrenia and 82 healthy controls. The set of music consisted of ten pieces of sad music and ten pieces of cheerful music. The subjects were asked to answer whether each piece of music was sad or cheerful.
RESULTS
The correct response rate of music emotion recognition was lower in patients with schizophrenia compared with that in healthy controls (76.67+/-19.03% vs. 93.54+/-8.18%, p<0.001). When subgroup analyses was done by type of music ('sad' or 'cheerful'), patients showed a significantly lower correct response rate in recognizing both sad and cheerful emotion in music than healthy controls (sad emotion : 65.12+/-31.15% vs. 91.95+/-15.27%, cheerful emotion : 88.0+/-16.83% vs. 95.12+/-8.64%). The significant correlations between the clinical symptom severity of schizophrenia and music emotion recognition were not found to be.
CONCLUSION
The results suggest that patients with schizophrenia might have difficulties in recognizing musical nuances.

Keyword

Schizophrenia; Music; Emotion recognition

MeSH Terms

Facial Expression
Humans
Music
Schizophrenia