Guo Wenbin, Liu Feng, Xiao Changqing, Liu Jianrong, Yu Miaoyu, Zhang Zhikun, Zhang Jian, Zhao Jingping
Mental Health Institute of the Second Xiangya Hospital, Key Laboratory of Psychiatry and Mental Health of Hunan Province, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410011, China.
Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, Sichuan 610054, China.
Schizophr Res. 2015 Aug;166(1-3):144-50. doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2015.04.034. Epub 2015 May 13.
Schizophrenia is conceived as a disconnection syndrome and anatomical distance may affect functional connectivity (FC) in schizophrenia patients. However, whether and how anatomical distance affects FC remains unclear in first-episode, medication-naive schizophrenia at rest.
Forty-nine schizophrenia patients and 50 age-, sex-, and education-matched healthy controls underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. Regional FC strength was computed for each voxel in the brain, which was further divided into short-range and long-range FC strength.
The patients exhibited increased short-range positive FC strength in the left superior medial frontal gyrus, and increased long-range positive FC strength in the right angular gyrus and bilateral posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)/precuneus compared with the controls. Further seed-based FC analysis showed that the left superior medial frontal gyrus had increased short-range FC with the right inferior frontal gyrus, while the right angular gyrus and bilateral PCC/precuneus had increased long-range FC with the prefrontal gyrus. No significant correlation was observed between abnormal FC strength and clinical variables in the patient group.
The findings reveal a pattern of increased anatomical distance affecting FC in the patients, with the results of increased short-range positive FC strength in the anterior default-mode network (DMN) and increased long-range positive FC strength in the posterior DMN in schizophrenia, and highlight the importance of the DMN in the neurobiology of schizophrenia.
精神分裂症被认为是一种脱节综合征，解剖距离可能会影响精神分裂症患者的功能连接（FC）。然而，在首发、未用药的静息状态精神分裂症患者中，解剖距离是否以及如何影响FC仍不清楚。
49名精神分裂症患者和50名年龄、性别及教育程度匹配的健康对照者接受了静息态功能磁共振成像扫描。计算大脑中每个体素的区域FC强度，并进一步分为短程和长程FC强度。
与对照组相比，患者左侧额上内侧回短程正性FC强度增加，右侧角回及双侧后扣带回皮质（PCC）/楔前叶长程正性FC强度增加。基于种子点的FC进一步分析显示，左侧额上内侧回与右侧额下回的短程FC增加，而右侧角回及双侧PCC/楔前叶与前额叶的长程FC增加。在患者组中，异常FC强度与临床变量之间未观察到显著相关性。
研究结果揭示了一种解剖距离增加影响患者FC的模式，即精神分裂症患者前默认模式网络（DMN）短程正性FC强度增加，后DMN长程正性FC强度增加，突出了DMN在精神分裂症神经生物学中的重要性。
