1Peking University Six Hospital, Beijing 100191, China
2Peking University Institute of Mental Health, Beijing 100191, China
3Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Ministry of Health (Peking University), Beijing 100191, China
4LIAMA Center for Computational Medicine, National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
5Department of Radiology, The Third Hospital, Peking University, Beijing 100191, China
6Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences, Beijing 100871, China
7PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
#These authors contributed equally to this work.
Corresponding authors: Hao Yan and Dai Zhang. E-mail: hao_y@bjmu.edu.cn, daizhang@bjmu.edu.cn

Abstract 

Several lines of evidence suggest that efficient information integration between brain regions is disrupted in schizophrenia. Abnormalities in white matter tracts that interconnect brain regions may be directly relevant to this pathophysiological process. As a complex mental disorder with high heritability, mapping abnormalities in patients and their firstdegree relatives may help to disentangle the risk factors for schizophrenia. We established a weighted network model of white matter connections using diffusion tensor imaging in 25 nuclear families with schizophrenic probands (19 patients and 41 unaffected parents) and two unrelated groups of normal controls (24 controls matched with patients and 26 controls matched with relatives). The patient group showed lower global efficiency and local efficiency. The decreased regional efficiency was localized in hubs such as the bilateral frontal cortices, bilateral anterior cingulate cortices, and left precuneus. The global effi ciency was negatively correlated with cognition scores derived from a 5-factor model of schizophrenic psychopathology. We also found that unaffected parents displayed decreased regional efficiency in the right temporal cortices, left supplementary motor area, left superior temporal pole, and left thalamus. The global efficiency tended to be lower in unaffected parents. Our data suggest that (1) the global effi ciency loss in neuroanatomical networks may be associated with the cognitive disturbances in schizophrenia; and (2) genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia may influence the anatomical organization of an individual’s brain networks.

Keywords

network analysis; diffusion tensor imaging; tractography; white matter; small-world architecture

[SpringerLink]