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Negative symptoms are associated with modularity and thalamic connectivity in schizophrenia

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Abstract

Negative symptoms, including avolition, anhedonia, asociality, blunted affect and alogia are associated with poor long-term outcome and functioning. However, treatment options for negative symptoms are limited and neurobiological mechanisms underlying negative symptoms in schizophrenia are still poorly understood. Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging scans were acquired from 64 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and 35 controls. Global and regional network properties and rich club organization were investigated using graph analytical methods. We found that the schizophrenia group had higher modularity, clustering coefficient and characteristic path length, and lower rich connections compared to controls, suggesting highly connected nodes within modules but less integrated with nodes in other modules in schizophrenia. We also found a lower nodal degree in the left thalamus and left putamen in schizophrenia relative to the control group. Importantly, higher modularity was associated with greater negative symptoms but not with cognitive deficits in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia suggesting an alteration in modularity might be specific to overall negative symptoms. The nodal degree of the left thalamus was associated with both negative and cognitive symptoms. Our findings are important for improving our understanding of abnormal white-matter network topology underlying negative symptoms in schizophrenia.

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Funding

This work was supported by Research Fund of Izmir Katip Celebi University (Project number: 2018-GAP-TIPF-0003) which had no role in the design of the study, collection and analysis of data and decision to publish.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Katip Celebi University, Ataturk Education and Research Hospital, Izmir, Turkey

    Adem Bayrakçı, Nabi Zorlu, Merve Karakılıç, Funda Gülyüksel & Elif Oral

  2. Department of Neurosciences, Institute of Health Sciences, Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey

    Berna Yalınçetin & Emre Bora

  3. Department of Radiodiagnostics, Katip Celebi University, Ataturk Education and Research Hospital, Izmir, Turkey

    Fazıl Gelal

  4. Faculty of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey

    Emre Bora

  5. Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre, Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

    Emre Bora

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  1. Adem Bayrakçı
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  2. Nabi Zorlu
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Bayrakçı, A., Zorlu, N., Karakılıç, M. et al. Negative symptoms are associated with modularity and thalamic connectivity in schizophrenia. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 273, 565–574 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00406-022-01433-5

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