ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Neurol.

Sec. Applied Neuroimaging

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1559564

This article is part of the Research TopicAdvanced fNIRS Applications in Neuroscience and Neurological DisordersView all 21 articles

Alterations in Frontotemporal Cerebral activity specific to auditory verbal hallucination during verbal fluency task in schizophrenia :A fNIRS study

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Key Laboratory for Biomechanics and Mechanobiology of Ministry of Education, Beihang University, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
  • 2School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
  • 3Peking University Sixth Hospital, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
  • 4Institute of Mental Health, Peking University Sixth Hospital, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
  • 5National Clinical Research Center for Mental Disorders, Peking University Sixth Hospital, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
  • 6Beihang School, Beihang University, Beijing, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Background: Patients with auditory verbal hallucination(AVH) may experience significant occupational and social functional disabilities, which bring a heavy burden to their families and society . Although neuroimaging studies have explored the brain regions associated with AVH and proposed models to explain AVH , the potential pathological mechanisms are not clear. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a portable and suitable measurement, particularly in exploring brain activation during related tasks. Hence, our researchers aimed to explore the differences in the cerebral hemodynamic function between patients with schizophrenia with AVH (SZ-AVHs) and patients with schizophrenia without AVH(SZ-nAVHs) through fNIRS to examine neural abnormalities associated more specifically with AVH.Methods: A 52-channel functional near-infrared spectroscopy system was used to monitor hemodynamic changes in SZ-AVHs (n = 178) and SZ-nAVHs (n = 172) during a verbal fluency task (VFT). Clinical history, and symptom severity were also noted. The original fNIRS data were analyzed using NirSpark to obtain the brain functional eigenvalues including the integral value, which represents the degree of brain activation, and the centroid value, which represents the speed of blood oxygen response.Result: Our results showed that the integral values of the SZ-AVHs were significantly higher than those of the SZ-nAVHs in the left STC [t=3.16, p=0.014] while the centroid values of the SZ-AVHs were significantly higher than those of the SZ-nAVHs in the right vlPFC [t=2.78, p=0.046].Discussion: Our findings indicate that SZ-AVHs exhibited lower activation in the left STC and Slower response speed in the right vlPFC than SZ-nAVHs.

Keywords: Schizophrenia, auditory verbal hallucination, near-infrared spectroscopy, verbal fluency task, Integral value, centroid value

Received: 13 Jan 2025; Accepted: 29 May 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Tian, Wang, Qiao, Quan, Song, Wang and Dong. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Wentian Dong, Peking University Sixth Hospital, Beijing, 100191, Beijing Municipality, China

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