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Left-right asymmetry is an important organizing feature of the healthy brain that may be altered in schizophrenia, but most studies have used relatively small samples and heterogeneous approaches, resulting in equivocal findings. We carried out the largest case-control study of structural brain asymmetries in schizophrenia, with MRI data from 5,080 affected individuals and 6,015 controls across 46 datasets, using a single image analysis protocol. Asymmetry indexes were calculated for global and regional cortical thickness, surface area, and subcortical volume measures. Differences of asymmetry were calculated between affected individuals and controls per dataset, and effect sizes were meta-analyzed across datasets. Small average case-control differences were observed for thickness asymmetries of the rostral anterior cingulate and the middle temporal gyrus, both driven by thinner left-hemispheric cortices in schizophrenia. Analyses of these asymmetries with respect to the use of antipsychotic medication and other clinical variables did not show any significant associations. Assessment of age- and sex-specific effects revealed a stronger average leftward asymmetry of pallidum volume between older cases and controls. Case-control differences in a multivariate context were assessed in a subset of the data (N = 2,029), which revealed that 7% of the variance across all structural asymmetries was explained by case-control status. Subtle case-control differences of brain macrostructural asymmetry may reflect differences at the molecular, cytoarchitectonic, or circuit levels that have functional relevance for the disorder. Reduced left middle temporal cortical thickness is consistent with altered left-hemisphere language network organization in schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia (SZ) is associated with an increased risk of life-long cognitive impairments, age-related chronic disease, and premature mortality. We investigated evidence for advanced brain ageing in adult SZ patients, and whether this was associated with clinical characteristics in a prospective meta-analytic study conducted by the ENIGMA Schizophrenia Working Group. The study included data from 26 cohorts worldwide, with a total of 2803 SZ patients (mean age 34.2 years; range 18-72 years; 67% male) and 2598 healthy controls (mean age 33.8 years, range 18-73 years, 55% male). Brain-predicted age was individually estimated using a model trained on independent data based on 68 measures of cortical thickness and surface area, 7 subcortical volumes, lateral ventricular volumes and total intracranial volume, all derived from T1-weighted brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. Deviations from a healthy brain ageing trajectory were assessed by the difference between brain-predicted age and chronological age (brain-predicted age difference [brain-PAD]). On average, SZ patients showed a higher brain-PAD of +3.55 years (95% CI: 2.91, 4.19; I2 = 57.53%) compared to controls, after adjusting for age, sex and site (Cohen's d = 0.48). Among SZ patients, brain-PAD was not associated with specific clinical characteristics (age of onset, duration of illness, symptom severity, or antipsychotic use and dose). This large-scale collaborative study suggests advanced structural brain ageing in SZ. Longitudinal studies of SZ and a range of mental and somatic health outcomes will help to further evaluate the clinical implications of increased brain-PAD and its ability to be influenced by interventions.

Using data from the ABCD Study, this study aims to gain insight into the disruption of the salience network, particularly the anterior insula, in children with psychotic-like experiences. Rationale Schizotypal Disorder occurring in Childhood (SDC) involves a pattern of social deficits, perceptual distortions, and odd or eccentric behaviour that begins in childhood around the ages of 6 to 12 years (Tonge et al., 2020). There is evidence to suggest that it is a developmental predictor of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders in adults (Tonge et al., 2020). The prevalence of SDC has not been formally established but may be reflected in population-based studies of psychotic-like experiences (PLEs; Jones et al., 2015). PLEs are subclinical symptoms of psychosis that are thought to be a form of an extended psychosis phenotype (Remberk, 2017). A meta-analysis of 19 population-based studies found that the prevalence of PLEs in children aged 9 to 12 years old was around 17% (Kelleher et al., 2012). Children who experienced PLEs at age 12 were at greater risk of developing a psychotic disorder at age 18 (Niarchou et al., 2015). Therefore, research into children with PLEs can provide greater insight into early-life psychosis vulnerability. Children with SDC appear to have difficulties switching their attention from their internal preoccupations to the external environment (Tonge et al., 2020). Neuroimaging research has focused extensively on three core brain networks: the default mode network (DMN), the central executive network (CEN), and the salience network (SAL) (Menon, 2011). The DMN is active during internally driven cognitive modes, such as self-referential thought, and includes the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and inferior parietal lobule (Harrison et al., 2008). Alternatively, the CEN is responsible for high-level tasks, involving cognitive control, and includes the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and posterior parietal cortex (Harding et al., 2015). The SAL allows us to attend to relevant stimuli or events and includes the anterior insular cortex (AIC), ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, and anterior cingulate cortex (Sridharan et al., 2008; Wylie & Tregellas, 2010). During the performance of cognitively demanding tasks, the SAL and CEN are typically active, whereas the DMN decreases in activation (Putcha et al., 2016). This DMN-CEN transition appears disrupted in individuals with psychosis, as the proximal salience to an internal mental process, which would normally promote DMN activity, is not suppressed during tasks requiring attention to the external environment (Bolton et al., 2020). The SAL’s main driver, the AIC, is hypothesised to modulate the switch between the DMN and CEN (Bolton et al., 2020; Menon, 2011; Sridharan et al., 2008). To our knowledge, no studies have investigated the structural and functional connectivity of the AIC in children with PLEs. A meta-analysis found that the greatest reduction in volume was in the AIC region in patients with schizophrenia (Shepherd et al., 2012). Lesions of the AIC were associated with a significant impairment of the cognitive control capacity (Wu et al., 2019). Although less clearly characterised, children with SDC can also experience deficits in attention, processing speed, working memory, and motor delays (Tonge et al., 2020). Further investigations would help develop a better understanding of the neurocognitive and attentional profile associated with children at-risk of psychosis in adulthood to support early diagnosis and intervention.

BACKGROUND Formal thought disorder (FThD) is a core feature of psychosis, and its severity and long-term persistence relates to poor clinical outcomes. However, advances in developing early recognition and management tools for FThD are hindered by a lack of insight into the brain-level predictors of FThD states and progression at the individual level. METHODS 233 individuals with recent-onset psychosis were drawn from the multi-site European Prognostic Tools for Early Psychosis Management study. Support vector machine classifiers were trained within a cross-validation framework to separate two FThD symptom-based subgroups (high vs. low FThD severity), using cross-sectional whole-brain multi-band fractional amplitude of low frequency fluctuations (fALFF), gray-matter volume (GMV) and white-matter volume (WMV) data. Moreover, we trained machine learning models on these neuroimaging readouts to predict the persistence of high FThD subgroup membership from baseline to 1-year follow-up. RESULTS Cross-sectionally, multivariate patterns of GMV within the salience, dorsal attention, visual and ventral attention networks separated the FThD severity subgroups (BAC=60.8%). Longitudinally, distributed activations/deactivations within all fALFF sub-bands (BACslow-5=73.2%, BACslow-4=72.9%, BACslow-3=68.0), GMV patterns overlapping with the cross-sectional ones (BAC=62.7%) and smaller frontal WMV (BAC=73.1%) predicted the persistence of high FThD severity from baseline to follow-up, with a combined multi-modal balanced accuracy of BAC=77%. CONCLUSIONS We report first evidence of brain structural and functional patterns predictive of FThD severity and persistence in early psychosis. These findings open the avenue for the development of neuroimaging-based diagnostic, prognostic and treatment options for the early recognition and management of FThD and associated poor outcomes.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-anp-10.1177_00048674231187312 for Plasma neurofilament light in behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia compared to mood and psychotic disorders by Dhamidhu Eratne, Matthew Kang, Charles Malpas, Steve Simpson-Yap, Courtney Lewis, Christa Dang, Jasleen Grewal, Amy Coe, Hannah Dobson, Michael Keem, Wei-Hsuan Chiu, Tomas Kalincik, Suyi Ooi, David Darby, Amy Brodtmann, Oskar Hansson, Shorena Janelidze, Kaj Blennow, Henrik Zetterberg, Adam Walker, Olivia Dean, Michael Berk, Cassandra Wannan, Christos Pantelis, Samantha M Loi, Mark Walterfang, Samuel F Berkovic, Alexander F Santillo and Dennis Velakoulis in Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry

Psychotic disorders are frequently associated with decline in functioning and cognitive difficulties are observed in subjects at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis. In this work, we applied automatic approaches to neurocognitive and functioning measures, with the aim of investigating the link between global, social and occupational functioning, and cognition. 102 CHR subjects and 110 patients with recent onset depression (ROD) were recruited. Global assessment of functioning (GAF) related to symptoms (GAF-S) and disability (GAF-D). and global functioning social (GF-S) and role (GF-R), at baseline and of the previous month and year, and a set of neurocognitive measures, were used for classification and regression. Neurocognitive measures related to GF-R at baseline (r = 0.20, p = 0.004), GF-S at present (r = 0.14, p = 0.042) and of the past year (r = 0.19, p = 0.005), for GAF-F of the past month (r = 0.24, p < 0.001) and GAF-D of the past year (r = 0.28, p = 0.002). Classification reached values of balanced accuracy of 61% for GF-R and GAF–D. We found that neurocognition was related to psychosocial functioning. More specifically, a deficit in executive functions was associated to poor social and occupational functioning.

Processing speed (PS) impairment is one of the most severe and common cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. Previous studies have reported correlations between PS and white matter diffusion properties, including fractional anisotropy (FA), in several fiber bundles in schizophrenia, suggesting that white matter alterations could underpin decreased PS. In schizophrenia, white matter alterations are most prevalent within inter-hub connections of the rich club. However, the spatial and topological characteristics of this association between PS and FA have not been investigated in patients. In this context, we tested whether structural connections comprising the rich club network would underlie PS impairment in 298 patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and 190 healthy controls from the Australian Schizophrenia Research Bank. PS, measured using the digit symbol coding task, was largely (Cohen’s d = 1.33) and significantly (P < .001) reduced in the patient group when compared with healthy controls. Significant associations between PS and FA were widespread in the patient group, involving all cerebral lobes. FA was not associated with other cognitive measures of phonological fluency and verbal working memory in patients, suggesting specificity to PS. A topological analysis revealed that despite being spatially widespread, associations between PS and FA were over-represented among connections forming the rich club network. These findings highlight the need to consider brain network topology when investigating high-order cognitive functions that may be spatially distributed among several brain regions. They also reinforce the evidence that brain hubs and their interconnections may be particularly vulnerable parts of the brain in schizophrenia.

In this project, we aim to investigate the date/delay effect in temporal discounting (Read et al., 2005) as well as associations between schizotypy, temporal discounting and the date/delay effect. Specifically, we want to (a) replicate the date/delay effect, (b) examine the association of temporal discounting and schizotypy in the general population, and (c) find out whether the magnitude of the date/delay effect is associated with schizotypy.

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-anp-10.1177_00048674211058684 for Plasma neurofilament light chain protein is not increased in treatment-resistant schizophrenia and first-degree relatives by Dhamidhu Eratne, Shorena Janelidze, Charles B Malpas, Samantha Loi, Mark Walterfang, Antonia Merritt, Ibrahima Diouf, Kaj Blennow, Henrik Zetterberg, Brandon Cilia, Cassandra Wannan, Chad Bousman, Ian Everall, Andrew Zalesky, Mahesh Jayaram, Naveen Thomas, Samuel F Berkovic, Oskar Hansson, Dennis Velakoulis, Christos Pantelis and Alexander Santillo in Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry

Supplemental material, Supplementary_Material for Neurological, neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental complications of COVID-19 by Christos Pantelis, Mahesh Jayaram, Anthony J Hannan, Robb Wesselingh, Jess Nithianantharajah, Cassandra MJ Wannan, Warda Taqdees Syeda, KH Christopher Choy, Daniela Zantomio, Arthur Christopoulos, Dennis Velakoulis and Terence J O’Brien in Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry

Ajuts: Project is funded by grant agreement HEALTH-F2-2010-241909 (Project EU-GEI) from the European Community Seventh Framework Programme. Additional financial support was obtained from the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (recurrent funding and fellowships) and by Fondation Pierre Deniker. The study received grant 08-MNP-007 from the French government Agence Nationale de la Recherche and grant AOM-07-118 (Influence of Cannabis Psychopathological Outcome in At-risk Mental State [ICAAR study]) from the French Health Ministry Programme Hospitalier de Recherche Clinique. The Sainte-Anne Hospital Center promoted the study. Dr Kempton was supported by a Medical Research Council Fellowship grant MR/J008915/1. Dr Pantelis was supported by Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council Senior Principal Research Fellowship (ID: 628386 & 1105825) and by grant R246-2016-3237 from the Lundbeck Foundation. Dr Barrantes-Vidal was supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación e Universidades (PSI2017-87512-C2-1-R), and the Generalitat de Catalunya (2017SGR1612 and ICREA Academia Award). Dr Modinos was supported by a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship #202397/Z/16/Z, jointly funded by The Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society. This case-control study analyzes emotion recognition and neuroimaging data as well as clinical and functional outcomes for individuals at risk for transition to psychosis and those without psychiatric or neurological disorders. Is altered emotion recognition associated with adverse clinical and functional outcomes in people at clinical high risk for psychosis? In this case-control study of 213 individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis and 52 healthy participants, abnormalities in the recognition of negative emotion at baseline were associated with neuroanatomical alterations in the medial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus and with a low level of functioning at a 12-month follow-up. This study found that, in people with high risk for developing psychosis, functional outcomes are associated with the degree to which their emotion processing is altered. The development of adverse clinical outcomes in patients with psychosis has been associated with behavioral and neuroanatomical deficits related to emotion processing. However, the association between alterations in brain regions subserving emotion processing and clinical outcomes remains unclear. To examine the association between alterations in emotion processing and regional gray matter volumes in individuals at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis, and the association with subsequent clinical outcomes. This naturalistic case-control study with clinical follow-up at 12 months was conducted from July 1, 2010, to August 31, 2016, and collected data from 9 psychosis early detection centers (Amsterdam, Basel, Cologne, Copenhagen, London, Melbourne, Paris, The Hague, and Vienna). Participants (213 individuals at CHR and 52 healthy controls) were enrolled in the European Network of National Schizophrenia Networks Studying Gene-Environment Interactions (EU-GEI) project. Data were analyzed from October 1, 2018, to April 24, 2019. Emotion recognition was assessed with the Degraded Facial Affect Recognition Task. Three-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging scans were acquired from all participants, and gray matter volume was measured in regions of interest (medial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, hippocampus, and insula). Clinical outcomes at 12 months were evaluated for transition to psychosis using the Comprehensive Assessment of At-Risk Mental States criteria, and the level of overall functioning was measured through the Global Assessment of Functioning [GAF] scale. A total of 213 individuals at CHR (105 women [49.3%]; mean [SD] age, 22.9 [4.7] years) and 52 healthy controls (25 women [48.1%]; mean [SD] age, 23.3 [4.0] years) were included in the study at baseline. At the follow-up within 2 years of baseline, 44 individuals at CHR (20.7%) had developed psychosis and 169 (79.3%) had not. Of the individuals at CHR reinterviewed with the GAF, 39 (30.0%) showed good overall functioning (GAF score, ≥65), whereas 91 (70.0%) had poor overall functioning (GAF score

Supplemental material, Supplementary_files_of_GWAS_of_schizophrenia_684indiv_EUR_3covariates_v3-revised_v1 for Wnt receptor gene FZD1 was associated with schizophrenia in genome-wide SNP analysis of the Australian Schizophrenia Research Bank cohort by Xiaoman Liu, Siew-Kee Low, Joshua R Atkins, Jing Qin Wu, William R Reay, Heath M Cairns, Melissa J Green, Ulrich Schall, Assen Jablensky, Bryan Mowry, Patricia T Michie, Stan V Catts, Frans Henskens, Christos Pantelis, Carmel Loughland, Alan V Boddy, Paul A Tooney, Rodney J Scott, Vaughan J Carr and Murray J Cairns in Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry

BackgroundThe profile of cortical neuroanatomical abnormalities in schizophrenia is not fully understood, despite hundreds of published structural brain imaging studies. This study presents the first meta-analysis of cortical thickness and surface area abnormalities in schizophrenia conducted by the ENIGMA (Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta Analysis) Schizophrenia Working Group.MethodsThe study included data from 4474 individuals with schizophrenia (mean age, 32.3 years; range, 11-78 years; 66% male) and 5098 healthy volunteers (mean age, 32.8 years; range, 10-87 years; 53% male) assessed with standardized methods at 39 centers worldwide.ResultsCompared with healthy volunteers, individuals with schizophrenia have widespread thinner cortex (left/right hemisphere: Cohen's d=-0.530/-0.516) and smaller surface area (left/right hemisphere: Cohen's d=-0.251/-0.254), with the largest effect sizes for both in frontal and temporal lobe regions. Regional group differences in cortical thickness remained significant when statistically controlling for global cortical thickness, suggesting regional specificity. In contrast, effects for cortical surface area appear global. Case-control, negative, cortical thickness effect sizes were two to three times larger in individuals receiving antipsychotic medication relative to unmedicated individuals. Negative correlations between age and bilateral temporal pole thickness were stronger in individuals with schizophrenia than in healthy volunteers. Regional cortical thickness showed significant negative correlations with normalized medication dose, symptom severity, and duration of illness and positive correlations with age at onset.ConclusionsThe findings indicate that the ENIGMA meta-analysis approach can achieve robust findings in clinical neuroscience studies; also, medication effects should be taken into account in future genetic association studies of cortical thickness in schizophrenia.

Supplemental methods. (DOCX 12083 kb)

ImportanceA recently published study of national data by McGrath et al in 2014 showed increased risk of schizophrenia (SCZ) in offspring associated with both early and delayed parental age, consistent with a U-shaped relationship. However, it remains unclear if the risk to the child is due to psychosocial factors associated with parental age or if those at higher risk for SCZ tend to have children at an earlier or later age.ObjectiveTo determine if there is a genetic association between SCZ and age at first birth (AFB) using genetically informative but independently ascertained data sets.Design, setting, and participantsThis investigation used multiple independent genome-wide association study data sets. The SCZ sample comprised 18 957 SCZ cases and 22 673 controls in a genome-wide association study from the second phase of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, and the AFB sample comprised 12 247 genotyped women measured for AFB from the following 4 community cohorts: Estonia (Estonian Genome Center Biobank, University of Tartu), the Netherlands (LifeLines Cohort Study), Sweden (Swedish Twin Registry), and the United Kingdom (TwinsUK). Schizophrenia genetic risk for each woman in the AFB community sample was estimated using genetic effects inferred from the SCZ genome-wide association study.Main outcomes and measuresWe tested if SCZ genetic risk was a significant predictor of response variables based on published polynomial functions that described the relationship between maternal age and SCZ risk in offspring in Denmark. We substituted AFB for maternal age in these functions, one of which was corrected for the age of the father, and found that the fit was superior for the model without adjustment for the father's age.ResultsWe observed a U-shaped relationship between SCZ risk and AFB in the community cohorts, consistent with the previously reported relationship between SCZ risk in offspring and maternal age when not adjusted for the age of the father. We confirmed that SCZ risk profile scores significantly predicted the response variables (coefficient of determination R2 = 1.1E-03, P = 4.1E-04), reflecting the published relationship between maternal age and SCZ risk in offspring by McGrath et al in 2014.Conclusions and relevanceThis study provides evidence for a significant overlap between genetic factors associated with risk of SCZ and genetic factors associated with AFB. It has been reported that SCZ risk associated with increased maternal age is explained by the age of the father and that de novo mutations that occur more frequently in the germline of older men are the underlying causal mechanism. This explanation may need to be revised if, as suggested herein and if replicated in future studies, there is also increased genetic risk of SCZ in older mothers.

Background: Indicated intervention prior to the onset of psychosis may help to delay, attenuate or even prevent the illness. To date, successful intervention trials using atypical antipsychotics and/or cognitive behavioural therapy have been reported, but it is not clear that these treatments are targeting the underlying brain pathology. Given our previous findings of progressive grey matter loss over the transition to psychosis, agents that can prevent this, such as lithium, might be useful for preventing or delaying the onset of psychosis. Methods: In this open-label trial, 11 ultra-high-risk patients who received low- dose lithium treatment for four months were compared with 10 similar patients who received only needs-based intervention. Magnetic resonance imaging, including T2 relaxometry and proton spectroscopy was performed prior to initiation of treatment and after four months. Results: Hippocampal T2 declined significantly in the treatment group (p=0.018). No significant group x time effects were seen for brain metabolites, although N-acetyl aspartate (NAA), myo-inositol, creatine and choline all tended to increase with lithium administration and decrease or remain unchanged in the comparison group. Conclusions: Decreased T2 relaxation time and increased concentrations of NAA are indicators of increased neuronal function/viability. Low-dose lithium may help regulate synaptic pruning and reduce neuronal dysfunction associated with the onset of psychosis.

A common limitation of neuroimaging studies is their small sample sizes. To overcome this hurdle, the Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis (ENIGMA) Consortium combines neuroimaging data from many institutions worldwide. However, this introduces heterogeneity due to different scanning devices and sequences. ENIGMA projects commonly address this heterogeneity with random-effects meta-analysis or mixed-effects mega -analysis. Here we tested whether the batch adjustment method, ComBat, can further reduce site-related het-erogeneity and thus increase statistical power. We conducted random-effects meta-analyses, mixed-effects mega -analyses and ComBat mega-analyses to compare cortical thickness, surface area and subcortical volumes between 2897 individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and 3141 healthy controls from 33 sites. Specifically, we compared the imaging data between individuals with schizophrenia and healthy controls, covarying for age and sex. The use of ComBat substantially increased the statistical significance of the findings as compared to random - effects meta-analyses. The findings were more similar when comparing ComBat with mixed-effects mega-analysis, although ComBat still slightly increased the statistical significance. ComBat also showed increased statistical power when we repeated the analyses with fewer sites. Results were nearly identical when we applied the ComBat harmonization separately for cortical thickness, cortical surface area and subcortical volumes. Therefore, we recommend applying the ComBat function to attenuate potential effects of site in ENIGMA projects and other multi-site structural imaging work. We provide easy-to-use functions in R that work even if imaging data are partially missing in some brain regions, and they can be trained with one data set and then applied to another (a requirement for some analyses such as machine learning).