The effect of short-term antipsychotic treatment on disrupted thalamocortical functional connectivity in drug-na?ve patients with first-episode schizophrenia
10.3760/cma.j.cn113661-20220211-00030
- VernacularTitle:短程抗精神病药治疗对首次发病未服药精神分裂症患者丘脑-皮质环路的影响
- Author:
Guowei WU
1
;
Yanyu SHEN
;
Wen ZHANG
;
Zhening LIU
;
Eric CHEN
;
Hailong LYU
;
Yicheng LONG
;
Mengjie DENG
;
Weidan PU
Author Information
1. 中南大学湘雅二医院精神卫生研究所，长沙410011
- Publication Type:Journal Article
- Keywords:
Schizophrenia;
Medication therapy;
Neural circuit
- From:
Chinese Journal of Psychiatry
2022;55(4):245-253
- CountryChina
- Language:Chinese
-
Abstract:
Objective:This study aimed to investigate the effect of short-term antipsychotic medication treatment of patients with schizophrenia on the effect of the thalamocortical resting-state functional connectivity.Methods:83 first-episode drug-na?ve schizophrenia patients and 117 matched healthy controls participated in the present study. The study collected resting-state fMRI data before and after the patients received short-term antipsychotics to assess the changes in the thalamocortical circuits and clinical symptoms. The directional interactions between the thalamus and other brain regions were investigated using a standard seed-based whole-brain correlation by choosing the bilateral thalamus as the seeds. Spearman′s correlation analysis was carried out between the change of abnormal functional connectivity and improved clinical symptoms in patients.Results:Compared with the healthy controls, schizophrenia patients showed decreased thalamic-prefrontal functional connectivity (including the middle frontal cortex, inferior frontal cortex, middle cingulate cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and inferior parietal lobe, all P<0.05, FDR corrected) and increased thalamic-sensorimotor functional connectivity(including the precentral gyrus, superior temporal cortex, middle temporal cortex, inferior temporal cortex, parahippocampus, and middle occipital cortex, all P<0.05, FDR corrected)at baseline. After short-term antipsychotic treatment, the thalamic-prefrontal hypo-connectivity was significantly enhanced, and the thalamic-sensorimotor hyper-connectivity was significantly decreased. Furthermore, the changes of abnormal functional connectivity were correlated significantly with the PANSS total score changes improvement ( r=0.435, P=0.014; r=0.394, P=0.028,uncorrected). Conclusions:The present study replicates previous findings that the abnormalities of thalamocortical circuits in schizophrenia are characterized by thalamic-prefrontal hypoconnectivity and thalamic-sensorimotor hyperconnectivity. Moreover, short-term antipsychotic treatment partly improves thalamocortical abnormalities, which further relates to clinical symptom relief; Restoring of abnormal thalamocortical circuits plays an important role in the early treatment of schizophrenia.
