Abnormal synchrony and effective connectivity in patients with schizophrenia and auditory hallucinations

作者：de la Iglesia Vaya Maria^*; Jose Escarti Maria; Molina Mateo Jose; Marti Bonmati Luis; Gadea Marien; Xavier Castellanos Francisco; Aguilar Garcia Iturrospe Eduardo J; Robles Montserrat; Biswal Bharat B; Sanjuan Julio

来源：NeuroImage-Clinical, 2014, 6: 171-179.

DOI：10.1016/j.nicl.2014.08.027

• Schizophrenia
• Auditory hallucinations
• Functional connectivity
• Cerebellum
• Synchrony
• Effective connectivity

Auditory hallucinations (AH) are themost frequent positive symptoms in patientswith schizophrenia. Hallucinations have been related to emotional processing disturbances, altered functional connectivity and effective connectivity deficits. Previously, we observed that, compared to healthy controls, the limbic network responses of patients with auditory hallucinations differed when the subjects were listening to emotionally charged words. We aimed to compare the synchrony patterns and effective connectivity of task-related networks between schizophrenia patients with and without AH and healthy controls.
Schizophrenia patients with AH (n = 27) and without AH (n = 14) were compared with healthy participants (n = 31). We examined functional connectivity by analyzing correlations and cross-correlations among previously detected independent component analysis time courses. Granger causality was used to infer the information flow direction in the brain regions.
The results demonstrate that the patterns of cortico-cortical functional synchrony differentiated the patientswith AH from the patients without AH and from the healthy participants. Additionally, Granger-causal relationships between the networks clearly differentiated the groups. In the patients with AH, the principal causal source was an occipital-cerebellar component, versus a temporal component in the patientswithoutAHand the healthy controls.
These data indicate that an anomalous process of neural connectivity existswhen patientswith AH process emotional auditory stimuli. Additionally, a central role is suggested for the cerebellumin processing emotional stimuli in patients with persistent AH.

• 出版日期2014