Citation

Liang N, Liu S, Li X, Wen D, Li Q, Tong Y, Xu Y. Front. Neurosci. 2022; 16.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Frontiers Research Foundation)

DOI

10.3389/fnins.2022.865738

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Treatment-resistant auditory verbal hallucinations (TRAVHs) might cause an increased risk of violence, suicide, and hospitalization in patients with schizophrenia (SCZ). Although neuroimaging studies have identified the neural correlation to the symptom of AVH, functional brain activity that correlates particularly in patients with TRAVH remains limited. 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 in SCZ-TRAVH, patients with schizophrenia without AVH (SCZ-nAVH), and healthy controls (HCs), to examine neural abnormalities associated more specifically with TRAVH.

METHODS: A 52-channel functional near-infrared spectroscopy system was used to monitor hemodynamic changes in patients with SCZ-TRAVH (n = 38), patients with SCZ-nAVH (n = 35), and HC (n = 30) during a verbal fluency task (VFT). VFT performance, clinical history, and symptom severity were also noted. The original fNIRS data were analyzed using MATLAB to obtain the β values (the brain cortical activity response during the VFT task period); these were used to calculate Δβ (VFT β minus baseline β), which represents the degree of change in oxygenated hemoglobin caused by VFT task.

RESULT: Our results showed that there were significant differences in Δβ values among the three groups at 26 channels (ch4, ch13-15, 18, 22, ch25-29, 32, ch35-39, ch43-51, F = 1.70 to 19.10, p < 0.043, FDR-corrected) distributed over the prefrontal-temporal cortical regions. The further pairwise comparisons showed that the Δβ values of 24 channels (ch13-15, 18, 22, 25, ch26-29, ch35-39, ch43-49, ch50-51) were significantly lower in the SCZ group (SCZ-TRAVH and/or SCZ-nAVH) than in the HC group (p < 0.026, FDR-corrected). Additionally, the abnormal activation in the ch22 of right postcentral gyrus was correlated, in turn, with severity of TRAVH.

CONCLUSION: Our findings indicate that specific regions of the prefrontal cortex may be associated with TRAVH, which may have implications for early intervention for psychosis. Copyright © 2022 Liang, Liu, Li, Wen, Li, Tong and Xu.

Language: en

Keywords

adult; human; female; male; schizophrenia; disease severity; risk factor; major clinical study; controlled study; disease association; clinical feature; hallucination; hemodynamics; neuropsychological test; mental task; Article; near infrared spectroscopy; treatment-resistant; auditory verbal hallucination; auditory verbal hallucinations; hemodynamic response; near-infrared spectroscopy; postcentral gyrus; verbal fluency task