Kamath Rohit S, Weldon Kimberly B, Moser Hannah R, Montoya Samantha A, Abdullahi Kamar S, Burton Philip C, Sponheim Scott R, Olman Cheryl A, Schallmo Michael-Paul
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging. 2024 Dec 16. doi: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2024.12.002.
Contour integration, the process of joining spatially separated elements into a single unified line, has consistently been found to be impaired in schizophrenia. Recent work suggests that this deficit could be associated with psychotic symptomatology rather than a specific diagnosis such as schizophrenia.
Examining a transdiagnostic sample of participants with psychotic psychopathology, we obtained quantitative indices of contour perception in a psychophysical behavioral task. We also measured responses during an analogous task using ultra-high field (7T) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
We found impaired contour discrimination performance among people with psychotic psychopathology (PwPP) (n = 63) compared with healthy control participants (n = 34) and biological relatives of PwPP (n = 44). Participants with schizophrenia (n = 31) showed impaired task performance compared with participants with bipolar disorder (n = 18). fMRI showed higher responses in the lateral occipital cortex of PwPP than in control participants. Using task-based functional connectivity analyses, we observed abnormal connectivity between visual brain areas during contour perception among PwPP. These connectivity differences only emerged when participants had to distinguish the contour object from background distractors, suggesting that a failure to suppress noise elements relative to contour elements may underlie impaired contour processing in PwPP.
Our results are consistent with impaired contour integration in psychotic psychopathology, and especially schizophrenia, that is related to cognitive dysfunction and may be linked to impaired functional connectivity across visual regions.
轮廓整合是将空间上分离的元素连接成一条统一线条的过程，一直以来都发现精神分裂症患者在这方面存在缺陷。近期研究表明，这种缺陷可能与精神病性症状有关，而非与精神分裂症等特定诊断相关。
我们对患有精神病性精神病理学的参与者进行了跨诊断样本研究，在一项心理物理行为任务中获得了轮廓感知的定量指标。我们还使用超高场（7T）功能磁共振成像（fMRI）在一项类似任务中测量了反应。
我们发现，与健康对照参与者（n = 34）和患有精神病性精神病理学的参与者的生物学亲属（n = 44）相比，患有精神病性精神病理学的参与者（PwPP，n = 63）的轮廓辨别能力受损。与双相情感障碍患者（n = 18）相比，精神分裂症患者（n = 31）的任务表现受损。fMRI显示，PwPP的枕叶外侧皮质的反应高于对照参与者。通过基于任务的功能连接分析，我们观察到PwPP在轮廓感知过程中视觉脑区之间存在异常连接。这些连接差异仅在参与者必须将轮廓物体与背景干扰物区分开来时才出现，这表明相对于轮廓元素而言，未能抑制噪声元素可能是PwPP轮廓处理受损的基础。
我们的结果与精神病性精神病理学，尤其是精神分裂症中轮廓整合受损一致，这与认知功能障碍有关，可能与视觉区域间功能连接受损有关。
