Abnormality of Functional Connections in the Resting State Brains of Schizophrenics

Abstract

To explore the change of brain connectivity in schizophrenics (SCZ), the resting-state EEG source functional connections of SCZ and healthy control (HC) were investigated in this paper. Different band single-layer networks, multilayer networks, and improved multilayer networks were constructed and their topological attributes were extracted. The topological attributes of SCZ and HC were automatically distinguished using ensemble learning methods called Ensemble Learning based on Trees and Soft voting method, and the effectiveness of different network construction methods was compared based on the classification accuracy. The results showed that the classification accuracy was 89.38% for α band network, 82.5% for multilayer network, and 86.88% for improved multilayer network. Comparing patients with SCZ to those with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the classification accuracy of improved multilayer network was the highest, which was 88.12%. The power spectrum in the α band of SCZ was significantly lower than HC, whereas there was no significant difference between SCZ and AD. This indicated that the improved multilayer network can effectively distinguish SCZ and other groups not only when their power spectrum was significantly different. The results also suggested that the improved multilayer topological attributes were regarded as biological markers in the clinical diagnosis of patients with schizophrenia and even other mental disorders.

Multilayer Network Analysis across Cortical Depths in Resting-State 7T fMRI

“…For example, multilayer connectomics enables the integration of complex neuroimaging data (cortical lamina, frequency bands, multi-modal neuroimaging) [28][29][30][31][32][33]57] and the creation of new network features. New network features can be used to explain neuroscientific findings, as in this work, or even enhance machine learning workflows to better discriminate between disease states [90]. Future connectomics studies with available data should therefore consider using a multilayer framework to augment brain network modeling and analysis.…”