Repository logo
 

Dynamic Reorganization of Functional Connectivity Reveals Abnormal Temporal Efficiency in Schizophrenia.

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Sun, Yu 
Collinson, Simon L 
Sim, Kang 

Abstract

Emerging evidence suggests that schizophrenia is associated with brain dysconnectivity. Nonetheless, the implicit assumption of stationary functional connectivity (FC) adopted in most previous resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies raises an open question of schizophrenia-related aberrations in dynamic properties of resting-state FC. This study introduces an empirical method to examine the dynamic functional dysconnectivity in patients with schizophrenia. Temporal brain networks were estimated from resting-state fMRI of 2 independent datasets (patients/controls = 18/19 and 53/57 for self-recorded dataset and a publicly available replication dataset, respectively) by the correlation of sliding time-windowed time courses among regions of a predefined atlas. Through the newly introduced temporal efficiency approach and temporal random network models, we examined, for the first time, the 3D spatiotemporal architecture of the temporal brain network. We found that although prominent temporal small-world properties were revealed in both groups, temporal brain networks of patients with schizophrenia in both datasets showed a significantly higher temporal global efficiency, which cannot be simply attributable to head motion and sampling error. Specifically, we found localized changes of temporal nodal properties in the left frontal, right medial parietal, and subcortical areas that were associated with clinical features of schizophrenia. Our findings demonstrate that altered dynamic FC may underlie abnormal brain function and clinical symptoms observed in schizophrenia. Moreover, we provide new evidence to extend the dysconnectivity hypothesis in schizophrenia from static to dynamic brain network and highlight the potential of aberrant brain dynamic FC in unraveling the pathophysiologic mechanisms of the disease.

Description

Keywords

dynamic functional connectivity, dysconnectivity, resting-state fMRI, spatiotemporal disorganization, temporal efficiency, Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Atlases as Topic, Brain, Connectome, Female, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Middle Aged, Nerve Net, Schizophrenia, Time Factors, Young Adult

Journal Title

Schizophr Bull

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0586-7614
1745-1701

Volume Title

45

Publisher

Oxford University Press (OUP)