Search

Combining structural (sMRI) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data in schizophrenia patients with and without auditory hallucinations (9 SZ_AVH, 12 SZ_nAVH), 18 patients with bipolar disorder, and 22 healthy controls, we examined whether cortical thinning was associated with abnormal activity in functional brain networks associated with auditory hallucinations. Language-task fMRI data were combined with mean cortical thickness values from 148 brain regions in a constrained principal component analysis (CPCA) to identify brain structure-function associations predictable from group differences. Two components emerged from the multimodal analysis. The "AVH component" highlighted an association of frontotemporal and cingulate thinning with altered brain activity characteristic of hallucinations among patients with AVH. In contrast, the "Bipolar component" distinguished bipolar patients from healthy controls and linked increased activity in the language network with cortical thinning in the left occipital-temporal lobe. Our findings add to a body of evidence of the biological underpinnings of hallucinations and illustrate a method for multimodal data analysis of structure-function associations in psychiatric illness., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Activity in dorsal attention (DAN) and frontoparietal (FPN) functional brain networks is linked to allocation of attention to external stimuli, and activity in the default-mode network (DMN) is linked to allocation of attention to internal representations. Tasks requiring attention to external stimuli shift activity to the DAN/FPN and away from the DMN, and optimal task performance depends on balancing DAN/FPN against DMN activity. The current functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study assessed the balance of DAN/FPN and DMN activity in 13 schizophrenia patients and 13 healthy controls while they were engaged in a task switching Stroop paradigm which demanded internally directed attention to task instructions. The typical pattern of reciprocity between the DAN/FPN and DMN was observed for healthy controls but not for patients, suggesting a reduction in the internally focussed thought important for maintenance of instructions and strategies in schizophrenia. The observed alteration in the balance between DAN/FPN and DMN in patients may reflect a general mechanism underlying multiple forms of cognitive impairment in schizophrenia, including global processing deficits such as cognitive inefficiency and impaired context processing., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)