Abstract
Alterations in dynamic intrinsic brain activity and signaling of neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, have been independently detected in schizophrenia patients. Yet, it remains unclear whether the dopamine genetic risk variants have association with brain intrinsic activity. We aimed to investigate the schizophrenia-specific dynamic amplitude of low frequency fluctuation (dALFF) altered pattern, and its association with dopamine genetic risk score in first-episode drug-naïve schizophrenia (FES). Fifty-two FES and 51 healthy controls were included. A sliding-window method based on the dALFF was adopted to estimate the dynamic alterations in intrinsic brain activity. Subjects were genotyped, and a genetic risk score (GRS), which combined the additive effects of ten risk genotypes from five dopamine-related genes, was calculated. We used the voxel-wise correlation analysis to explore the association of dopamine-GRS with dALFF. FES showed significantly increased dALFF left medial prefrontal cortex and significantly decreased dALFF in the right posterior cingulate cortex compared with healthy controls. Greater dopamine GRS in FES was associated with higher dALFF in the left middle frontal gyrus and left inferior parietal gyrus. Our findings indicate that cumulative dopamine genetic risk is associated with a known imaging phenotype for schizophrenia.
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Data Availability
The datasets used or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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We thank all the study participants for their efforts. We thank Jijun Wang from Shanghai Mental Health Center for data collection.
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This study was supported in part by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant/Award No. 2021M692007), Natural Science Foundation (Youth Science Foundation Project) of Shaanxi Province (Grant/Award No. 2022JQ-875).
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Yafei Kang conceived of the study and drafted the manuscript. Youming Zhang, Kexin Huang and Zhenhong Wang helped to revise the manuscript.
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Kang, Y., Zhang, Y., Huang, K. et al. Association of dopamine-based genetic risk score with dynamic low-frequency fluctuations in first-episode drug-naïve schizophrenia. Brain Imaging and Behavior 17, 584–594 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-023-00786-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-023-00786-2