Yonsei University · Medicine
Professor Suk Kyoon An's research lab focuses on the neurobiological and psychological mechanisms underlying schizophrenia spectrum disorders, with a particular emphasis on early-stage psychosis, ultra-high-risk (UHR) populations, and recent-onset schizophrenia. The lab investigates epigenetic factors—such as OXTR gene methylation—linking biological mechanisms to social and emotional deficits, while also exploring cognitive biases, facial emotion recognition, and coping strategies as potential vulnerability markers. Using multimodal approaches including event-related potentials, pyrosequencing, and clinical questionnaires, the lab aims to identify early biomarkers and pathophysiological pathways to inform prevention and early intervention strategies.
Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.
These results suggest that event-related potentials can be used as a neuronal correlate of alcohol craving in alcohol-dependent patients. Future investigations will be needed to assess the frequency of relapse in the patients included in this study, to elucidate the meaning of the observed results with regard to the therapeutic outcomes.
Negative symptoms are recognized as a fundamental feature of schizophrenia throughout the disease course. Epigenetic alterations in the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) may be a key mechanism involved in social-emotional disturbances of schizophrenia. Here, we investigated OXTR methylation and its association with clinical and brain network connectivity phenotypes of negative symptoms, particularly anhedonia-asociality, in individuals with recent-onset schizophrenia (ROS) and at ultrahigh risk (UHR
This study's aim was to investigate coping strategies and their relationship to symptoms in people at ultra high risk (UHR) for psychosis compared with recent-onset schizophrenia (SPR) and healthy controls. Thirty-three UHR participants, 22 SPR patients, and 33 healthy controls completed the Ways of Coping Questionnaire and other clinical measures. People at UHR for psychosis showed significantly more reliance on tension-reduction and less reliance on problem-focused coping than healthy controls
Our findings suggest that questionnaire-assessed basic symptoms, irrespective of their predictive validity, may predict a psychotic breakdown in pre-identified UHR individuals who are with genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia. Including all 3 psychosis-proneness dimensions into prediction models might help establish a more valid pathogenetic model of schizophrenia, and moreover, may provide some clues about course alteration strategies in hopes of preventing UHR individuals from converting to
UHR individuals exhibited inaccuracy and negative bias of facial emotion recognition. Furthermore, schizotypy scores were associated with inaccuracy but not with negative bias of facial emotion recognition. Paranoia level was correlated with "disgust" responses for neutral faces but not with inaccuracy. These findings suggest that inaccuracy and negative bias of facial emotion recognition reflect different underlying processes, and that inaccuracy may be a vulnerability marker for schizophrenia.
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