Negative symptoms are associated with modularity and thalamic connectivity in schizophrenia

Negative symptoms, including avolition, anhedonia, asociality, blunted affect and alogia are associated with poor long-term outcome and functioning. However, treatment options for negative symptoms are limited and neurobiological mechanisms underlying negative symptoms in schizophrenia are still poo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience 2023-04, Vol.273 (3), p.565-574
Main Authors: Bayrakçı, Adem, Zorlu, Nabi, Karakılıç, Merve, Gülyüksel, Funda, Yalınçetin, Berna, Oral, Elif, Gelal, Fazıl, Bora, Emre
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Affective disorders
Anhedonia
Brain - diagnostic imaging
Cognitive ability
Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Emotional behavior
Hedonic response
Humans
Magnetic resonance imaging
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Mental disorders
Neural networks
Neurosciences
Original Paper
Psychiatry
Putamen
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia - diagnostic imaging
Substantia alba
Thalamus
Thalamus - diagnostic imaging
White Matter
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Negative symptoms, including avolition, anhedonia, asociality, blunted affect and alogia are associated with poor long-term outcome and functioning. However, treatment options for negative symptoms are limited and neurobiological mechanisms underlying negative symptoms in schizophrenia are still poorly understood. Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging scans were acquired from 64 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and 35 controls. Global and regional network properties and rich club organization were investigated using graph analytical methods. We found that the schizophrenia group had higher modularity, clustering coefficient and characteristic path length, and lower rich connections compared to controls, suggesting highly connected nodes within modules but less integrated with nodes in other modules in schizophrenia. We also found a lower nodal degree in the left thalamus and left putamen in schizophrenia relative to the control group. Importantly, higher modularity was associated with greater negative symptoms but not with cognitive deficits in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia suggesting an alteration in modularity might be specific to overall negative symptoms. The nodal degree of the left thalamus was associated with both negative and cognitive symptoms. Our findings are important for improving our understanding of abnormal white-matter network topology underlying negative symptoms in schizophrenia.
ISSN:0940-1334
1433-8491
DOI:10.1007/s00406-022-01433-5