Transdiagnostic white matter controllability deficits across patients with affective and anxiety spectrum disorders.

Background: Affective and anxiety disorders including major depression disorder (MDD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and social anxiety disorder (SAD) are characterized by network dysconnectivity. Network controllability quantifies the capability of specific brain regions to impact functional dynamics based on the underlying structural connectome. This study aimed to investigate transdiagnostic and illness-specific network controllability alterations across these three disorders.

Controllability of Functional Brain Networks and Its Clinical Significance in First-Episode Schizophrenia.

Background And Hypothesis: Disrupted control of brain state transitions may contribute to the diverse dysfunctions of cognition, emotion, and behavior that are fundamental to schizophrenia. Control theory provides the rationale for evaluating brain state transitions from a controllability perspective, which may help reveal the brain mechanism for clinical features such as cognitive control deficits associated with schizophrenia. We hypothesized that brain controllability would be altered in patients with schizophrenia, and that controllability of brain networks would be related to clinical symptomatology.

Control theory illustrates the energy efficiency in the dynamic reconfiguration of functional connectivity.

The brain's functional connectivity fluctuates over time instead of remaining steady in a stationary mode even during the resting state. This fluctuation establishes the dynamical functional connectivity that transitions in a non-random order between multiple modes. Yet it remains unexplored how the transition facilitates the entire brain network as a dynamical system and what utility this mechanism for dynamic reconfiguration can bring over the widely used graph theoretical measurements.

Age-associated network controllability changes in first episode drug-naïve schizophrenia.

Background: Recent neuroimaging studies revealed dysregulated neurodevelopmental, or/and neurodegenerative trajectories of both structural and functional connections in schizophrenia. However, how the alterations in the brain's structural connectivity lead to dynamic function changes in schizophrenia with age remains poorly understood.

Methods: Combining structural magnetic resonance imaging and a network control theory approach, the white matter network controllability metric (average controllability) was mapped from age 16 to 60 years in 175 drug-naïve schizophrenia patients and 155 matched healthy controls.