Abnormalities in amgydala activation and functional connectivity during emotion processing have also been reported in those at genetic or clinical risk for schizophrenia. Studies in first-degree family members reported elevated amgydala activity to emotional stimuli (van Buuren et al., 2011), normal activation during an implicit facial emotion paradigm (Rasetti et al., 2009), reduced activation during sad mood induction (Habel et al., 2004), and abnormally strong benzodiazepine-induced reductions in activation during emotion identification (wolf et al., 2011). Amminger el al. (2011) reported behavioral emotion identification deficits in both high-risk and first-episode subjects. Abnormal amgydala activation to fearful facial expressions and reduced prefrontal-amgydala functional connectivity were identified in fMRI studies of clinically psychosis-prone subjects (Venkatasubramanian et al., 2010; Modinos et al., 2010; Wolf et al., 2015).
