101. Aberrant functional connectivity between the thalamus and visual cortex is related to attentional impairment in schizophrenia
- Author
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Maeri Yamamoto, Aleksic Branko, Ryohei Suzuki, Tetsuya Iidaka, Toshiya Inada, Norio Ozaki, Itaru Kushima, and Naoko Kawano
- Subjects
Adult ,Male ,Thalamus ,Neuroscience (miscellaneous) ,behavioral disciplines and activities ,Brain mapping ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,mental disorders ,medicine ,Humans ,Attention ,Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and imaging ,Visual Cortex ,Brain Mapping ,Resting state fMRI ,medicine.diagnostic_test ,business.industry ,Functional connectivity ,Magnetic resonance imaging ,Middle Aged ,medicine.disease ,Magnetic Resonance Imaging ,030227 psychiatry ,Psychiatry and Mental health ,Visual cortex ,medicine.anatomical_structure ,nervous system ,Schizophrenia ,Female ,Schizophrenic Psychology ,Functional magnetic resonance imaging ,business ,Neuroscience ,psychological phenomena and processes ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery - Abstract
Resting-state (rs) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have revealed dysfunctional thalamocortical functional connectivity (FC) in schizophrenia. However, the relationship between thalamocortical FC and cognitive impairment has not been thoroughly investigated. We hypothesized that aberrant thalamocortical FC is related to attention deficits in schizophrenia. Thirty-eight patients with schizophrenia and 38 matched healthy controls underwent rs-fMRI and task fMRI while performing a Flanker task. We observed decreased left thalamic activation in patients with schizophrenia using task fMRI to determine the thalamic seed. A seed-based analysis using this seed was performed in the whole brain to assess differences in thalamocortical FC between the groups. Significantly worse performance was observed in the patient group. The rs-fMRI analysis revealed significantly increased FC between the left thalamus seed and the occipital cortices/postcentral gyri in patients when compared to controls. In the patient group, significant positive correlations were observed between the degree of FC from the left thalamus to the bilateral occipital gyri, which correspond to the visual cortex, and the Flanker effect. No significant correlation was detected in the control group. These results indicate that aberrant FC between the left thalamus and the visual cortex is related to attention deficits in schizophrenia.
- Published
- 2018