Emotions have been discussed in earliest psychiatric literature as core characteristics of psychiatric patients. More recently emotions got back into the focus of modern neuropsychiatric imaging research. This is due to the outstanding importance of emotions for psychiatric symptomatology and also to recent technical developments in neuroimaging, which lay the ground for more complex paradigms. Especially schizophrenic patients show deficits in emotional functioning, such as in mood induction or emotion discrimination. It is subject to discussion how stable these dysfunctions are over the course of schizophrenia, e.g. in prodromal stage. Therefore research also deals with juvenile patients with schizophrenia-like symptoms. In the future it will be essential to characterize the effect of emotions on cognitive functions in healthy subjects and psychiatric patients.