Papers
Yao ZHNAG, Qin-yu LYU, Xin-xin HUANG, Chong-ze WANG, Qi YAN, Pei-juan WANG, Zheng-hui YI
Objective: To investigate abnormalities in striatal resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) and their relationship with negative symptoms in schizophrenia patients with predominant negative symptoms (PNS). Methods: Fifty-four schizophrenia patients with PNS and sixty-one healthy controls underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans. Data were collected on general demographic information, the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS), and the Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS). Twelve striatal subregions were selected as regions of interest (ROIs) to analyze the rsFC between each ROI and whole-brain voxels. The rsFC values of areas with significant differences were extracted for Pearson correlation analysis with negative symptoms. Results: Compared with healthy controls, schizophrenia patients with PNS exhibited decreased rsFC between the right dorsal caudal putamen (DCP) and right insula, left middle frontal gyrus (MFG), right median cingulate and paracingulate gyri (MCC); between the left DCP and right putamen, left insula, left MFG; between the right dorsal rostral putamen (DRP) and bilateral MFG, left insula, right MCC; between the left DRP and right insula, left rolandic operculum; between the right ventral rostral putamen (VRP) and bilateral putamen, left MFG, right MCC; between the left VRP and right insula, left putamen, bilateral MFG, right MCC, left inferior parietal gyrus, excluding supramarginal and angular gyri. Decreased rsFC was also observed between the left ventral caudate/nucleus accumbens (inferior) and right insula, left anterior cingulate cortex, supracallosal, bilateral precuneus (a threshold of P < 0.001 in voxel-level with P < 0.05 in cluster-lever, corrected for family-wise error, PFWE < 0.05/12=0.004). No regions showed increased rsFC in schizophrenia patients with PNS relative to healthy controls. And no significant correlations were found between striatal rsFC and negative symptoms (PBonferroni > 0.05). Conclusion: Schizophrenia patients with PNS exhibited widespread cortical-striatal functional connectivity abnormalities, particularly reduced rsFC between the putamen and the MFG, MCC and insula.