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Cigarette smoking and schizophrenia independently and reversibly altered intrinsic brain activity

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Abstract

Schizophrenia patients are at high risk for cigarette smoking, but the neurobiological mechanisms of this comorbid association are relatively unknown. Long-term nicotine intake may impact brain that are independently and additively associated with schizophrenia. We investigated whether altered intrinsic brain activity (iBA) related to schizophrenia pathology is also associated with nicotine addiction. Forty-two schizophrenia patients (21 smokers and 21 nonsmokers) and 21 sex- and age-matched healthy nonsmokers underwent task-free functional MRI. Whole brain iBA was measured by the amplitude of spontaneous low frequency fluctuation. Furthermore, correlation analyses between iBA, symptom severity and nicotine addiction severity were performed. We found that prefrontal cortex, right caudate, and right postcentral gyrus were related to both disease and nicotine addiction effects. More importantly, schizophrenia smokers, compared to schizophrenia nonsmokers showed reversed iBA in the above brain regions. In addition, schizophrenia smokers, relative to nonsmokers, altered iBA in the left striatal and motor cortices. The iBA of the right caudate was negatively correlated with symptom severity. The iBA of the right postcentral gyrus negatively correlated with nicotine addiction severity. The striatal and motor cortices could potentially increase the vulnerability of smoking in schizophrenia. More importantly, smoking reversed iBA in the right striatal and prefrontal cortices, consistent with the self-medication theory in schizophrenia. Smoking altered left striatal and motor cortices activity, suggesting that the nicotine addiction effect was independent of disease. These results provide a local property of intrinsic brain activity mechanism that contributes to cigarette smoking and schizophrenia.

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Funding

This study was funded by the National Science and Technologic Program of China (2015BAI13B02).

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  1. Huan Liu, Qi Luo and Wanyi Du contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, 400016, People’s Republic of China

    Huan Liu, Wanyi Du, Xiaolu Chen, Huaqing Meng & Lian Du

  2. Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, 400016, People’s Republic of China

    Qi Luo, Zhiwei Zhang & Renqiang Yu

  3. Brain Stimulation Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, 29425, USA

    Xingbao Li

  4. National Clinical Research Center on Mental Disorders, Changsha, People’s Republic of China

    Huaqing Meng & Lian Du

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  1. Huan Liu
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  2. Qi Luo
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  3. Wanyi Du
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  4. Xingbao Li
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  5. Zhiwei Zhang
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  7. Xiaolu Chen
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  8. Huaqing Meng
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  9. Lian Du
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Correspondence to Lian Du.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Liu, H., Luo, Q., Du, W. et al. Cigarette smoking and schizophrenia independently and reversibly altered intrinsic brain activity. Brain Imaging and Behavior 12, 1457–1465 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-017-9806-8

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