Facial emotion processing in schizophrenia: a meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging data

Background: People with schizophrenia have difficulty with emotion perception. Functional imaging studies indicate re-gional brain activation abnormalities in patients with schizo-phrenia when processing facial emotion. However, findings have not been entirely consistent across different studies. Methods: Activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analyses were conducted to examine brain activation during facialemotionprocessing inpatientswith schizophrenia, con-trols, and patients comparedwith controls. Secondarymeta-analyses were performed to assess the contribution of task design and illness chronicity to the results reported.Results: When processing facial expressions of emotions, both patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls activated the bilateral amygdala and right fusiform gyri. However, the extent of activation in these regions was generall