Archival ReportPrefrontal-Thalamic Anatomical Connectivity and Executive Cognitive Function in Schizophrenia
Section snippets
Study Participants
Forty-seven healthy subjects and 67 patients with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder (i.e., schizophreniform disorder, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder) who participated in an ongoing study of thalamocortical networks in psychotic disorders were screened for inclusion in this study. All patients with a schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis, hereafter referred to as schizophrenia, were recruited through the Psychotic Disorders Program at the Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital. Healthy subjects
Results
Seven subjects (2 healthy individuals and 5 patients) were excluded owing to presence of neuroimaging data artifacts based on visual inspection. Thus, the final sample included 45 healthy subjects and 62 patients with schizophrenia (Table 1). With the exception of education, the groups did not differ in demographic variables. No significant differences in HARDI QA metrics were detected between groups, including mean head translation and rotation in X, Y, and Z directions and percentage of
Discussion
Motivated by evidence implicating PFC-thalamic circuitry in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and mechanisms of cognitive impairment, we tested the hypothesis that anatomical connectivity between the PFC and thalamus is 1) reduced in schizophrenia and 2) related to impaired executive function. Our first hypothesis was supported; total connectivity of the PFC with the thalamus was significantly reduced in schizophrenia. Voxelwise analyses confirmed the reduction in connectivity localized to
Acknowledgments and Disclosures
This work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (Grant No. R01-MH102266 to NDW) and Vanderbilt Clinical and Translational Science Award (Grant No. UL1-RR024975) from the National Center for Research Resources, National Institute of Health.
We thank the individuals who participated in the study and Kristan Armstrong, Erin Brosey, Molly Boyce, and Yasmeen Iqbal for their assistance recruiting and screening subjects for participation in the study.
The authors report no biomedical
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MG-C and NDW contributed equally to this work.