The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, MOE Key Lab for Neuroinformation, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, People's Republic of China.
Psychological Medicine Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xinjiang Medical University, Xinjiang, People's Republic of China.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2019 Feb 1;40(2):517-528. doi: 10.1002/hbm.24391. Epub 2018 Sep 21.
Pathophysiological and atrophic changes in the cerebellum have been well-documented in schizophrenia. Reduction of gray matter (GM) in the cerebellum was confirmed across cognitive and motor cerebellar modules in schizophrenia. Such abnormalities in the cerebellum could potentially have widespread effects on both sensorimotor and cognitive symptoms. In this study, we investigated how reduction change in the cerebellum affects the static and the dynamic functional connectivity (FC) between the cerebellum and cortical/subcortical networks in schizophrenia. Reduction of GM in the cerebellum was confirmed across the cognitive and motor cerebellar modules in schizophrenic subjects. Results from this study demonstrates that the extent of reduction of GM within cerebellum correlated with increased static FCs between the cerebellum and the cortical/subcortical networks, including frontoparietal network (FPN), and thalamus in patients with schizophrenia. Decreased GM in the cerebellum was also associated with a declined dynamic FC between the cerebellum and the FPN in schizophrenic subjects. The severity of patients' positive symptom was related to these structural-functional coupling score of cerebellum. These findings identified potential cerebellar driven functional changes associated with positive symptom deficits. A post hoc analysis exploring the effect of changed FC within cerebellum, confirmed that a significant positive relationship, between dynamic FCs of cerebellum-thalamus and intracerebellum existed in patients, but not in controls. The reduction of GM within the cerebellum might be associated with modulation of cerebellum-thalamus, and contributes to the dysfunctional cerebellar-cortical communication in schizophrenia. Our results provide a new insight into the role of cerebellum in understanding the pathophysiological of schizophrenia.
小脑的病理生理和萎缩变化在精神分裂症中已有充分记录。小脑灰质（GM）减少在精神分裂症的认知和运动小脑模块中得到了证实。小脑的这种异常可能对感觉运动和认知症状都有广泛的影响。在这项研究中，我们研究了小脑的减少变化如何影响小脑与皮质/皮质下网络之间的静态和动态功能连接（FC）。在精神分裂症患者中，小脑的 GM 减少在认知和运动小脑模块中都得到了证实。这项研究的结果表明，小脑 GM 减少的程度与小脑与皮质/皮质下网络（包括额顶网络（FPN）和丘脑）之间的静态 FC 增加有关。小脑 GM 的减少也与精神分裂症患者小脑与 FPN 之间的动态 FC 下降有关。患者阳性症状的严重程度与小脑的这些结构-功能耦合评分有关。这些发现确定了与阳性症状缺陷相关的潜在小脑驱动的功能变化。一项事后分析探索了小脑内 FC 变化的影响，证实了患者小脑-丘脑和小脑内的动态 FC 之间存在显著的正相关关系，但在对照组中不存在。小脑内 GM 的减少可能与小脑-丘脑的调制有关，并导致精神分裂症中小脑-皮质通讯的功能障碍。我们的结果为理解精神分裂症的病理生理学提供了小脑的新视角。
