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When making decisions in everyday life, we often have to choose between uncertain outcomes. Economic studies have demonstrated that healthy people tend to prefer options with known probabilities (risk) than those with unknown probabilities (ambiguity), which is referred to as "ambiguity aversion." However, it remains unclear how patients with schizophrenia behave under ambiguity, despite growing evidence of their altered decision-making under uncertainty. In this study, combining economic tools and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we assessed the attitudes toward risk/ambiguity and investigated the neural correlates during decision-making under risk/ambiguity in schizophrenia. Although no significant difference in attitudes under risk was observed, patients with schizophrenia chose ambiguity significantly more often than the healthy controls. Attitudes under risk and ambiguity did not correlate across patients with schizophrenia. Furthermore, unlike in the healthy controls, activation of the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex was not increased during decision-making under ambiguity compared to under risk in schizophrenia. These results suggest that ambiguity aversion, a well-established subjective bias, is attenuated in patients with schizophrenia, highlighting the need to distinguish between risk and ambiguity when assessing decision-making under these situations. Our findings, comprising important clinical implications, contribute to improved understanding of the mechanisms underlying altered decision-making in patients with schizophrenia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although some studies reported specifically self-face processing deficits in patients with schizophrenia disorder (SZ), it remains unclear whether these deficits rather reflect a more global face processing deficit. Contradictory results are probably due to the different methodologies employed and the lack of control of other confounding factors. Moreover, no study has so far evaluated possible daily life self-face recognition difficulties in SZ. Therefore, our primary objective was to investigate self-face recognition in patients suffering from SZ compared to healthy controls (HC) using an "objective measure" (reaction time and accuracy) and a "subjective measure" (self-report of daily self-face recognition difficulties).Method: Twenty-four patients with SZ and 23 HC performed a self-face recognition task and completed a questionnaire evaluating daily difficulties in self-face recognition. Recognition task material consisted in three different faces (the own, a famous and an unknown) being morphed in steps of 20%.Results: Results showed that SZ were overall slower than HC regardless of the face identity, but less accurate only for the faces containing 60%-40% morphing. Moreover, SZ and HC reported a similar amount of daily problems with self/other face recognition. No significant correlations were found between objective and subjective measures (p > 0.05).Limitations: The small sample size and relatively mild severity of psychopathology does not allow us to generalize our results.Conclusions: These results suggest that: (1) patients with SZ are as capable of recognizing their own face as HC, although they are susceptible to ambiguity; (2) there are far less self recognition deficits in schizophrenia patients than previously postulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]