Psychiatry Investig.  2021 Dec;18(12):1205-1212. 10.30773/pi.2020.0418.

Atypical Antipsychotics Mediate Dynamics of Intrinsic Brain Activity in Early-Stage Schizophrenia? A Preliminary Study

• Wang Y
• Jiang Y
• Liu D
• Zhang J
• Yao D
• Luo C
• Wang J

• KMID: 2523451
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.30773/pi.2020.0418

Abstract

Objective
Abnormalities of static brain activity have been reported in schizophrenia, but it remains to be clarified the temporal variability of intrinsic brain activities in schizophrenia and how atypical antipsychotics affect it.
Methods
We employed a resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) and a sliding-window analysis of dynamic amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (dALFF) to evaluate the dynamic brain activities in schizophrenia (SZ) patients before and after 8-week antipsychotic treatment. Twenty-six schizophrenia individuals and 26 matched healthy controls (HC) were included in this study.
Results
Compared with HC, SZ showed stronger dALFF in the right inferior temporal gyrus (ITG.R) at baseline. After medication, the SZ group exhibited reduced dALFF in the right middle occipital gyrus (MOG.R) and increased dALFF in the left superior frontal gyrus (SFG.L), right middle frontal gyrus (MFG.R), and right inferior parietal lobule (IPL.R). Dynamic ALFF in IPL.R was found to significant negative correlate with the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) scores at baseline.
Conclusion
Our results showed dynamic intrinsic brain activities altered in schizophrenia after short term antipsychotic treatment. The findings of this study support and expand the application of dALFF method in the study of the pathological mechanism in psychosis in the future.

Keyword

Schizophrenia; Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI); Intrinsic brain activity; Dynamic amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (dALFF); Atypical antipsychotics.