Altered Functional Connectivity of the Nucleus Accumbens Network Between Deficit and Non-deficit Schizophrenia

Zhou, Chao; Xue, Chen; Chen, Jiu; Amdanee, Nousayhah; Tang, Xiaowei; Zhang, Hongying; Zhang, Fuquan; Zhang, Xiangrong; Zhang, Caiyi

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2021.704631

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…The activation of NAcc is associated with the vividness of hallucinations ( 33 ) and auditory verbal imagery in schizophrenia patients ( 34 ). Moreover, the abnormal FC ( 20 , 35 ) and gray matter changes ( 36 ) of NAcc appeared to be associated with the presence of AVH and neurocognitive impairments. The results may indicate the unique role of NAcc in investigating the neural mechanisms of schizophrenia with AVH.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

The alternations of nucleus accumbent in schizophrenia patients with auditory verbal hallucinations during low-frequency rTMS treatment

Xie

Cai²,

Guan³

et al. 2022

Front. Psychiatry

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Low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has been shown to reduce the severity of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) and induce beneficial functional and structural alternations of the brain in schizophrenia patients with AVH. The nucleus accumbens (NAcc) as an important component of the ventral striatum is implicated with the pathology in AVH. However, the induced characteristic patterns of NAcc by low-frequency rTMS in schizophrenia with AVH are seldom explored. We investigated the functional and structural characteristic patterns of NAcc by using seed-based functional connectivity (FC) analysis and gray matter volume (GMV) measurement in schizophrenia patients with AVH during 1 Hz rTMS treatment. Although low-frequency rTMS treatment did not affect the volumetric changes of NAcc, the abnormal FC patterns of NAcc, including increased FC of NAcc with the temporal lobes and decreased FC of NAcc with the frontal cortices in the pretreatment patients compared to healthy controls, were normalized or reversed after treatment. These FC changes were associated with improvements in clinical symptoms and neurocognitive functions. Our findings may extend our understanding of the NAcc in the pathology of schizophrenia with AVH and might be a biomarker of clinical effect for low-frequency rTMS treatment in schizophrenia.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

The alternations of nucleus accumbent in schizophrenia patients with auditory verbal hallucinations during low-frequency rTMS treatment

Xie

Cai²,

Guan³

et al. 2022

Front. Psychiatry

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“…DS and NDS patients were diagnosed according to the Chinese version of the Schedule for the Deficit Syndrome (SDS) [ 34 ]. The inclusion and exclusion criteria used to choose the subjects are presented in our previously published studies [ 19 , 22 , 35 ] and are provided in the SI Methods . All participants provided written informed consent, which was approved by the Institutional Ethical Committee for Clinical Research of the Affiliated Brain Hospital of Nanjing Medical University and ZhongDa Hospital Affiliated to Southeast University.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Numerous neuroimaging studies have identified brain function alterations associated with cognitive impairments, symptom severity, and treatment effects in patients with SCZ [ 14 – 18 ]. Similarly, studies on DS have reported distinct abnormal functional changes compared to NDS [ 19 ], particularly in brain networks such as the default mode network [ 20 ], salience network [ 21 ], and nucleus accumbens network [ 22 ]. Many of these studies have also demonstrated specific associations between alterations in functional connectivity (FC) and negative symptoms and cognitive impairments in DS.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Convergent and divergent genes expression profiles associated with brain-wide functional connectome dysfunction in deficit and non-deficit schizophrenia

Zhou,

Tang,

et al. 2024

Transl Psychiatry

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Deficit schizophrenia (DS) is a subtype of schizophrenia characterized by the primary and persistent negative symptoms. Previous studies have identified differences in brain functions between DS and non-deficit schizophrenia (NDS) patients. However, the genetic regulation features underlying these abnormal changes are still unknown. This study aimed to detect the altered patterns of functional connectivity (FC) in DS and NDS and investigate the gene expression profiles underlying these abnormal FC. The study recruited 82 DS patients, 96 NDS patients, and 124 healthy controls (CN). Voxel-based unbiased brain-wide association study was performed to reveal altered patterns of FC in DS and NDS patients. Machine learning techniques were used to access the utility of altered FC for diseases diagnosis. Weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) was employed to explore the associations between altered FC and gene expression of 6 donated brains. Enrichment analysis was conducted to identify the genetic profiles, and the spatio-temporal expression patterns of the key genes were further explored. Comparing to CN, 23 and 20 brain regions with altered FC were identified in DS and NDS patients. The altered FC among these regions showed significant correlations with the SDS scores and exhibited high efficiency in disease classification. WGCNA revealed associations between DS/NDS-related gene expression and altered FC. Additionally, 22 overlapped genes, including 12 positive regulation genes and 10 negative regulation genes, were found between NDS and DS. Enrichment analyses demonstrated relationships between identified genes and significant pathways related to cellular response, neuro regulation, receptor binding, and channel activity. Spatial and temporal gene expression profiles of SCN1B showed the lowest expression at the initiation of embryonic development, while DPYSL3 exhibited rapid increased in the fetal. The present study revealed different altered patterns of FC in DS and NDS patients and highlighted the potential value of FC in disease classification. The associations between gene expression and neuroimaging provided insights into specific and common genetic regulation underlying these brain functional changes in DS and NDS, suggesting a potential genetic-imaging pathogenesis of schizophrenia.

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“… Zhou et al (2019a) probed numerous abnormal FCs of nerve pathways between the two patient groups, mainly concentrated in the frontooccipital, frontotemporal, and insula-visual cortex, as well as the temporooccipital pathway. In addition, a recent study demonstrated abnormal patterns of FC in the nucleus accumbens network between DS and NDS ( Zhou et al, 2021 ). Meanwhile, using the independent component analysis (ICA) method, further studies found the modular-level alterations in DS compared with the NDS and healthy controls, and the distinct and common disruptions mainly focus on SN, sensory motor network (SMN), DMN, and VN ( Yu et al, 2017 ; Zhou et al, 2019b ; Fan et al, 2022 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using support vector machine to explore the difference of function connection between deficit and non-deficit schizophrenia based on gray matter volume

Zhu

Wang

et al. 2023

Front. Neurosci.

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ObjectiveSchizophrenia can be divided into deficient schizophrenia (DS) and non-deficient schizophrenia (NDS) according to the presence of primary and persistent negative symptoms. So far, there are few studies that have explored the differences in functional connectivity (FC) between the different subtypes based on the region of interest (ROI) from GMV (Gray matter volume), especially since the characteristics of brain networks are still unknown. This study aimed to investigate the alterations of functional connectivity between DS and NDS based on the ROI obtained by machine learning algorithms and differential GMV. Then, the relationships between the alterations and the clinical symptoms were analyzed. In addition, the thalamic functional connection imbalance in the two groups was further explored.MethodsA total of 16 DS, 31 NDS, and 38 health controls (HC) underwent resting-state fMRI scans, patient group will further be evaluated by clinical scales including the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS), and the Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS). Based on GMV image data, a support vector machine (SVM) is used to classify DS and NDS. Brain regions with high weight in the classification were used as seed points in whole-brain FC analysis and thalamic FC imbalance analysis. Finally, partial correlation analysis explored the relationships between altered FC and clinical scale in the two subtypes.ResultsThe relatively high classification accuracy is obtained based on the SVM. Compared to HC, the FC increased between the right inferior parietal lobule (IPL.R) bilateral thalamus, and lingual gyrus, and between the right inferior temporal gyrus (ITG.R) and the Salience Network (SN) in NDS. The FC between the right thalamus (THA.R) and Visual network (VN), between ITG.R and right superior occipital gyrus in the DS group was higher than that in HC. Furthermore, compared with NDS, the FC between the ITG.R and the left superior and middle frontal gyrus decreased in the DS group. The thalamic FC imbalance, which is characterized by frontotemporal-THA.R hypoconnectivity and sensory motor network (SMN)-THA.R hyperconnectivity was found in both subtypes. The FC value of THA.R and SMN was negatively correlated with the SANS score in the DS group but positively correlated with the SAPS score in the NDS group.ConclusionUsing an SVM classification method and based on an ROI from GMV, we highlighted the difference in functional connectivity between DS and NDS from the local to the brain network, which provides new information for exploring the neural physiopathology of the two subtypes of schizophrenic.

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Altered Functional Connectivity of the Nucleus Accumbens Network Between Deficit and Non-deficit Schizophrenia

Cited by 8 publications

References 47 publications

The alternations of nucleus accumbent in schizophrenia patients with auditory verbal hallucinations during low-frequency rTMS treatment

The alternations of nucleus accumbent in schizophrenia patients with auditory verbal hallucinations during low-frequency rTMS treatment

Convergent and divergent genes expression profiles associated with brain-wide functional connectome dysfunction in deficit and non-deficit schizophrenia

Using support vector machine to explore the difference of function connection between deficit and non-deficit schizophrenia based on gray matter volume

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