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Abnormal Rich-Club Organization Associated with Compromised Cognitive Function in Patients with Schizophrenia and Their Unaffected Parents

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Abstract

Schizophrenia is considered to be a disorder of brain connectivity, which might result from a disproportionally impaired rich-club organization. The rich-club is composed of highly interconnected hub regions that play crucial roles in integrating information between different brain regions. Few studies have yet investigated whether the structural rich-club organization is impaired in patients and their first-degree relatives. In this study, we established a weighted network model of white matter connections using diffusion tensor imaging of 19 patients and 39 unaffected parents, 22 young healthy controls for the patients, and 25 old healthy controls for the parents. Feeder edges between rich-club nodes and non-rich-club nodes were significantly decreased in both schizophrenic patients and their unaffected parents compared with controls. Furthermore, the feeder edges showed significant positive correlations with the scores in Category Fluency Test—animal naming in the unaffected parents. Specific feeder edges exhibited discriminative power with accuracy of 84.4% in distinguishing unaffected parents from old healthy controls. Our findings suggest that impaired rich-club organization, especially impaired feeder edges, may be related to familial vulnerability to schizophrenia, possibly reflecting a genetic predisposition for schizophrenia.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grants from the National Basic Research Program of China (2011CB707805), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81370032, 91232305, 81361120395, and 91432304), and the International Science and Technology Cooperation Program of China (2010DFB30820).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Mental Health, Peking University Sixth Hospital, Beijing, 100191, China

    Xin Zhao, Jun Yan, Weihua Yue, Hao Yan & Dai Zhang

  2. National Clinical Research Center for Mental Disorders and Key Laboratory of Mental Health (Ministry of Health), Peking University, Beijing, 100191, China

    Xin Zhao, Jun Yan, Weihua Yue, Hao Yan & Dai Zhang

  3. Department of Psychiatry, Wuxi Mental Health Center, Nanjing Medical University, Wuxi, 214151, China

    Lin Tian

  4. Wuxi Tongren International Rehabilitation Hospital, Wuxi, 214151, China

    Lin Tian

  5. Peking University-Tsinghua University Joint Center for Life Sciences/ PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Dai Zhang

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  1. Xin Zhao
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Correspondence to Hao Yan or Dai Zhang.

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Zhao, X., Tian, L., Yan, J. et al. Abnormal Rich-Club Organization Associated with Compromised Cognitive Function in Patients with Schizophrenia and Their Unaffected Parents. Neurosci. Bull. 33, 445–454 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12264-017-0151-0

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