Dataset Information

Theory of mind network activity is altered in subjects with familial liability for schizophrenia.

ABSTRACT: As evidenced by a multitude of studies, abnormalities in Theory of Mind (ToM) and its neural processing might constitute an intermediate phenotype of schizophrenia. If so, neural alterations during ToM should be observable in unaffected relatives of patients as well, since they share a considerable amount of genetic risk. While behaviorally, impaired ToM function is confirmed meta-analytically in relatives, evidence on aberrant function of the neural ToM network is sparse and inconclusive. The present study therefore aimed to further explore the neural correlates of ToM in relatives of schizophrenia. About 297 controls and 63 unaffected first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia performed a ToM task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Consistent with the literature relatives exhibited decreased activity of the medial prefrontal cortex. Additionally, increased recruitment of the right middle temporal gyrus and posterior cingulate cortex was found, which was related to subclinical paranoid symptoms in relatives. These results further support decreased medial prefrontal activation during ToM as an intermediate phenotype of genetic risk for schizophrenia. Enhanced recruitment of posterior ToM areas in relatives might indicate inefficiency mechanisms in the presence of genetic risk.

SUBMITTER: Mohnke S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4733339 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Theory of mind network activity is altered in subjects with familial liability for schizophrenia.

Mohnke Sebastian S Erk Susanne S Schnell Knut K Romanczuk-Seiferth Nina N Schmierer Phöbe P Romund Lydia L Garbusow Maria M Wackerhagen Carolin C Ripke Stephan S Grimm Oliver O Haller Leila L Witt Stephanie H SH Degenhardt Franziska F Tost Heike H Heinz Andreas A Meyer-Lindenberg Andreas A Walter Henrik H

Social cognitive and affective neuroscience 20150904 2

As evidenced by a multitude of studies, abnormalities in Theory of Mind (ToM) and its neural processing might constitute an intermediate phenotype of schizophrenia. If so, neural alterations during ToM should be observable in unaffected relatives of patients as well, since they share a considerable amount of genetic risk. While behaviorally, impaired ToM function is confirmed meta-analytically in relatives, evidence on aberrant function of the neural ToM network is sparse and inconclusive. The p ...[more]

PMID: 26341902

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Project description:OBJECTIVE:Changes in heart rate (HR) and locomotor activity reflect changes in autonomic physiology, behavior, and mood. These systems may involve interrelated neural circuits that are altered in psychiatric illness, yet their interactions are poorly understood. We hypothesized interactions between HR and locomotor activity could be used to discriminate patients with schizophrenia from controls, and would be less able to discriminate non-psychiatric patients from controls. APPROACH:HR and locomotor activity were recorded via wearable patches in 16 patients with schizophrenia and 19 healthy controls. Measures of signal complexity and interactions were calculated over multiple time scales, including sample entropy, mutual information, and transfer entropy. A support vector machine was trained on these features to discriminate patients from controls. Additionally, time series were converted into a network with nodes comprised of HR and locomotor activity states, and edges representing state transitions. Graph properties were used as features. Leave-one-out cross validation was performed. To compare against non-psychiatric illness, the same approach was repeated in 41 patients with atrial fibrillation (AFib) and 53 controls. MAIN RESULTS:Network features enabled perfect discrimination of schizophrenia patients from controls with an areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 1.00 for training and test data. Other bivariate measures of interaction achieved lower AUCs (train 0.98, test 0.96), and univariate measures of complexity achieved the lowest performance. Conversely, interaction features did not improve discrimination of AFib patients from controls beyond univariate approaches. SIGNIFICANCE:Interactions between HR and locomotor activity enabled perfect discrimination of subjects with schizophrenia from controls, but these features were less performant in a non-psychiatric illness. This is the first quantitative evaluation of interactions between physiology and behavior in patients with psychiatric illness.

Dataset Information

Theory of mind network activity is altered in subjects with familial liability for schizophrenia.

Publications

Theory of mind network activity is altered in subjects with familial liability for schizophrenia.

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