Decreased Functional Connectivity in Schizophrenia: The Relationship Between Social Functioning and Graph Theoretical Network Measures
-
1
İzmir University of Economics, Psychology, Türkiye
-
2
Üsküdar University, Türkiye
Background: Schizophrenia is a complex disorder where abnormalities in brain connectivity and social functioning play a central role. Currently, brain structures and mechanisms related to social functioning in schizophrenia are being intensively studied. However, the relationship between social functioning, and topological properties of brain functional networks remain still not well understood. The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between complex network characteristics such as small-world network properties and social functioning in schizophrenia.
Methods: We tested this hypothesis by comparing differences in functional network topology and its correlation to clinical and behavioral measures in 23 patients diagnosed with Schizophrenia and 23 healthy controls during resting state. Resting-state fMRI time series data were acquired from 23 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia (14 male, 9 female) and 23 healthy volunteers (14 male, 9 female).
Results: The results revealed that patients with schizophrenia show significantly decreased connectivity in a diversity of brain regions that include mainly the right orbito-frontal cortex, bilateral putamen and left amygdala. Furthermore, topological properties of functional brain networks in patients with schizophrenia characterized by reduced average path length compared to Healthy controls but no significant difference was found for clustering coefficient, local efficiency and global efficiency. However, when we analyzed nodal efficiency and nodal degree, we found significantly lower nodal efficiency and nodal –degree particularly in bilateral putamen and left amygdala in patients with Schizophrenia.
Conclusion: These findings are consistent with previous studies that support disconnectivity hypothesis. The current results will help us to improve our understanding about the missing link between social cognition deficits and topological brain measures in Schizophrenia.
Keywords: default-mode, graph theory, fMRI, small-world, Schizophrenia
Keywords:
Default-mode,
graph theory,
fMRI,
Small-world,
Schizophrenia
Conference:
SAN2016 Meeting, Corfu, Greece, 6 Oct - 9 Oct, 2016.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation in SAN 2016 Conference
Topic:
Oral Presentations
Citation:
Erdeniz
B,
Serin
E,
İbadi
Y and
Tas
C
(2016). Decreased Functional Connectivity in Schizophrenia: The Relationship Between Social Functioning and Graph Theoretical Network Measures.
Conference Abstract:
SAN2016 Meeting.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2016.220.00074
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
01 Aug 2016;
Published Online:
01 Aug 2016.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Burak Erdeniz, İzmir University of Economics, Psychology, İzmir, Türkiye, burak.erdeniz@ieu.edu.tr