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People with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia often experience cognitive difficulties, including attention, concentration and memory problems. These cognitive difficulties are often early symptoms that appear before the beginning of psychosis. In a study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the researchers identified consistent links between cerebral connectivity and cognitive function in people with early psychosis and in people with high risk who later developed psychosis. This discovery could help researchers and doctors better understand the factors that lead to psychosis, inform the previous intervention and improve treatments.
What did the researchers see in the study?
Researchers Heather Burrell Ward, MD (Medical Center of the University of Vanderbilt), Roscoe Brady, Jr., MD, Ph.D. (Beth Israel Diacononess Medical Center), Kathryn Eve Lewandowski, Ph.D. (McLean Hospital), and his colleagues examined data from two major multisitio studies. Studies, the human connectoma project for early psychosis (HCP-EP) and the longitudinal study of North America 2 (NAPLS2), include participants with early psychosis or with high risk of psychosis, as well as healthy participants No known risks of psychosis by psychosis. .
The research team conducted an exhaustive analysis of the neuronal connections of the participants, or Connectome, to identify solid associations between cerebral connectivity and attention. Attention was measured using an auditory task developed specifically to evaluate sustained attention in people or at risk of psychotic disorders. The task qualifies three aspects of attention: surveillance, memory and ability to administer interference.
In total, the researchers analyzed data from 96 PC-EP participants with early psychosis and 213 NAPL2 participants with high risk of psychosis.
What did the study find?
In general, participants with psychosis or a higher risk of psychosis performed worse in the task of attention than their classmates who were not at risk of psychosis.
The data of the participants with early psychosis revealed associations between their brain connectivity and their attention, in line with the hypothesis of the researchers. Specifically, the lower connectivity between an area in the medial prefrontal cortex and a region in the somatomotor cortex was associated with a worse performance in the care task. The researchers found a similar connectivity cognition association between participants who had a higher risk of psychosis and finally developed.
The data of the two studies did not show connectivity-cognition associations for high-risk participants who did not develop psychosis or for participants who were not at risk of psychosis.
What do the results mean?
These consistent links between brain connectivity and cognition point to specific brain circuits that can contribute to cognitive difficulties in people with psychotic disorders, even before psychosis develops. However, these links do not provide evidence of a causal relationship. Researchers suggest that experimental studies that use non -invasive brain stimulation techniques could help determine if changes in these brain circuits directly affect cognitive performance. If so, these circuits can serve as specific objectives for therapeutic intervention.
Ward, Brady, Lewandowski and his colleagues point out that recruiting participants is a particular challenge in this research area, which requires considerable time, effort and resources. Only a small proportion of people who run the risk of psychosis finally develop psychosis, and participants at risk are often difficult to identify. According to researchers, these findings underline what the valuable studies of several sites such as HCP-EP and NAPLS2 are to improve our understanding of the factors that predict and contribute to psychosis.
Reference
Ward, HB, Beermann, A., Xie, J., Yildiz, G., Manzanarez Felix, K., Addington, J., Bearden, CE, Cadenhead, K., Cannon, Td, Cornblatt, B., Keshavan, M., Mathalon, D., Perkins, Do, Seidman, L., Stone, WS, Tsuang, Mt, Walker, EF, Woods, S., Coleman, MJ, … Brady, Ro, Red, Jr. (2024) . The robust brain correlates from cognitive performance in psychosis and its prodrome. Biological psychiatry, 97(2), 139-147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2024.07.012
Subsidies
MH066134 , MH066286 , MH120588-01A1 , MH081902 , MH081857 , MH117012 , MH109977 , MH082022 , MH081944 , MH066069 , MH076989 , MH081928 , MH081988 , MH116170
