Brain Network Localization of Gray Matter Atrophy and Neurocognitive and Social Cognitive Dysfunction in Schizophrenia.

Background: Numerous studies have established the presence of gray matter atrophy and brain activation abnormalities during neurocognitive and social cognitive tasks in schizophrenia. Despite a growing consensus that diseases localize better to distributed brain networks than individual anatomical regions, relatively few studies have examined brain network localization of gray matter atrophy and neurocognitive and social cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia.

Methods: To address this gap, we initially identified brain locations of structural and functional abnormalities in schizophrenia from 301 published neuroimaging studies with 8712 individuals with schizophrenia and 9275 healthy control participants. By applying novel functional connectivity network mapping to large-scale resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging datasets, we mapped these affected brain locations to 3 brain abnormality networks of schizophrenia.

Results: The gray matter atrophy network of schizophrenia comprised a broadly distributed set of brain areas predominantly implicating the ventral attention, somatomotor, and default networks. The neurocognitive dysfunction network was also composed of widespread brain areas primarily involving the frontoparietal and default networks. By contrast, the social cognitive dysfunction network consisted of circumscribed brain regions mainly implicating the default, subcortical, and visual networks.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest shared and unique brain network substrates of gray matter atrophy and neurocognitive and social cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia, which may not only refine the understanding of disease neuropathology from a network perspective but may also contribute to more targeted and effective treatments for impairments in different cognitive domains in schizophrenia.