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Altered Effective Connectivity within an Oculomotor Control Network in Unaffected Relatives of Individuals with Schizophrenia.

ABSTRACT: The ability to rapidly stop or change a planned action is a critical cognitive process that is impaired in schizophrenia. The current study aimed to examine whether this impairment reflects familial vulnerability to schizophrenia across two experiments comparing unaffected first-degree relatives to healthy controls. First, we examined performance on a saccadic stop-signal task that required rapid inhibition of an eye movement. Then, in a different sample, we investigated behavioral and neural responses (using fMRI) during a stop-signal task variant that required rapid modification of a prepared eye movement. Here, we examined differences between relatives and healthy controls in terms of activation and effective connectivity within an oculomotor control network during task performance. Like individuals with schizophrenia, the unaffected relatives showed behavioral evidence for more inefficient inhibitory processes. Unlike previous findings in individuals with schizophrenia, however, the relatives showed evidence for a compensatory waiting strategy. Behavioral differences were accompanied by more activation among the relatives in task-relevant regions across conditions and group differences in effective connectivity across the task that were modulated differently by the instruction to exert control over a planned saccade. Effective connectivity parameters were related to behavioral measures of inhibition efficiency. The results suggest that individuals at familial risk for schizophrenia were engaging an oculomotor control network differently than controls and in a way that compromises inhibition efficiency.

SUBMITTER: Lehet M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8467791 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BACKGROUND:Altered structural network-connectivity has been reported in psychotic disorder but whether these alterations are associated with genetic vulnerability, and/or with phenotypic variation, has been less well examined. This study examined i) whether differences in network-connectivity exist between patients with psychotic disorder, siblings of patients with psychotic disorder and controls, and ii) whether network-connectivity alterations vary with (subclinical) symptomatology. METHODS:Network-connectivity measures (global efficiency (GE), density, local efficiency (LE), clustering coefficient (CC)) were derived from diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) and were compared between 85 patients with psychotic disorder, 93 siblings without psychotic disorder and 80 healthy comparison subjects using multilevel regression models. In patients, associations between Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) symptoms and topological measures were examined. In addition, interactions between subclinical psychopathology and sibling/healthy comparison subject status were examined in models of topological measures. RESULTS:While there was no main effect of group with respect to GE, density, LE and CC, siblings had a significantly higher CC compared to patients (B = 0.0039, p = .002). In patients, none of the PANSS symptom domains were significantly associated with any of the four network-connectivity measures. The two-way interaction between group and SIR-r positive score in the model of LE was significant (χ2 = 6.24, p = .01, df = 1). In the model of CC, the interactions between group and respectively SIS-r positive (χ2 = 5.59, p = .02, df = 1) and negative symptom scores (χ2 = 4.71, p = .03, df = 1) were significant. Stratified analysis showed that, in siblings, decreased LE and CC was significantly associated with increased SIS-r positive scores (LE: B = -0.0049, p = .003, CC: B = -0.0066, p = .01) and that decreased CC was significantly associated with increased SIS-r negative scores (B = -0.012, p = .003). There were no significant interactions between group and SIS-r scores in the models of GE and density. CONCLUSION:The findings indicate absence of structural network-connectivity alterations in individuals with psychotic disorder and in individuals at higher than average genetic risk for psychotic disorder, in comparison with healthy subjects. The differential subclinical symptom-network connectivity associations in siblings with respect to controls may be a sign of psychosis vulnerability in the siblings.

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Altered Effective Connectivity within an Oculomotor Control Network in Unaffected Relatives of Individuals with Schizophrenia.

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