Neuroanatomical correlates of reality monitoring in patients with schizophrenia and auditory hallucinations

Abstract

Background Reality-monitoring process enables to discriminate memories of internally generated information from memories of externally derived information. Studies have reported impaired reality-monitoring abilities in schizophrenia patients with auditory hallucinations (AHs), specifically with an exacerbated externalization bias, as well as alterations in neural activity within frontotemporoparietal areas. In healthy subjects, impaired reality-monitoring abilities have been associated with reduction of the paracingulate sulcus (PCS). The current study aimed to identify neuroanatomical correlates of reality monitoring in patients with schizophrenia. Methods Thirty-five patients with schizophrenia and AHs underwent a reality-monitoring task and a 3D anatomical MRI scan at 1.5 T. PCS lengths were measured separately for each hemisphere, and whole-brain voxel-based morphometry analyses were performed using the Computational Anatomy Toolbox (version 12.6) to evaluate the gray-matter volume (GMV). Partial correlation analyses were used to investigate the relationship between reality-monitoring and neuroanatomical outcomes (PCS length and GMV), with age and intracranial volume as covariates. Results The right PCS length was positively correlated with reality-monitoring accuracy (Spearman’s ρ = 0.431, p = 0.012) and negatively with the externalization bias (Spearman’s ρ = −0.379, p = 0.029). Reality-monitoring accuracy was positively correlated with GMV in the right angular gyrus, whereas externalization bias was negatively correlated with GMV in the left supramarginal gyrus/superior temporal gyrus, in the right lingual gyrus and in the bilateral inferior temporal/fusiform gyri (voxel-level p < 0.001 and cluster-level p < 0.05, FDR-corrected). Conclusions Reduced reality-monitoring abilities were significantly associated with shorter right PCS and reduced GMV in temporal and parietal regions of the reality-monitoring network in schizophrenia patients with AHs.

Decreased resting-state neural signal in the left angular gyrus as a potential neuroimaging biomarker of schizophrenia: An amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation and support vector machine analysis

“…The AG plays a role in semantic processing, reading, and word comprehension, and is linked to higher memory scores ( 47 ). Over the course of SCH progression, patients exhibit increases in brain damage, with chronic SCH patients exhibiting the disruption of normal bilateral AG asymmetry and a reversal of the normal left > right asymmetry relative to HC individuals ( 48 ). In this analysis, decreased ALFF values were only observed in the left AG of analyzed SCH patients, potentially owing to the shorter disease course in these individuals.…”

Morphological alterations of contralesional hemisphere relate to functional outcomes after stroke

“…In poststroke patients, Spearman's partial correlation analysis between VBM/SBM indicators of each selected ROI in the contralesional hemisphere and scores of clinical assessments, including MBI, BBS, FMA‐UE, MMSE, and MoCA, was also performed with Matlab R2013b, respectively. Scatter plots showing the partial correlations between partial residuals for VBM/SBM indicators of the ROIs and partial residuals for scores of clinical assessments were carried out with GraphPad Prism version 8.0.1 (GraphPad Prism, San Diego, CA, USA) (Hackett et al, 2021; Perret et al, 2021). Parameters including age, gender, and time since stroke were controlled.…”

The neural signature of reality‐monitoring: A meta‐analysis of functional neuroimaging studies

“…At the structural level, the reduction in length in the paracingulate sulcus (PCS), a tertiary sulcus surrounding the ACC, is associated with reduced realitymonitoring performance (Buda et al, 2011;Fornito et al, 2008). The pathological implication of this structural variability has been shown in patients with schizophrenia, for whom the reduction in PCS length is associated with hallucinations (Garrison et al, 2015) and deficits of reality monitoring (Perret et al, 2021). If the relationship between brain morphometry and functional activity remains unclear, the cortical folding may influence the functional involvement of the amPFC T A B L E 5 Significant results of the comparison between reality-monitoring and self-monitoring studies (Self-monitoring > Reality-monitoring contrast).…”