Aberrant Frontal and Temporal Complex Network Structure in Schizophrenia: A Graph Theoretical Analysis

By Martijn P. van den Heuvel, René C. W. Mandl, Cornelis J. Stam, René S. Kahn, H. H. Hulshoff Pol. Journal of Neuroscience, 2010

666 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Brain regions are not independent. They are interconnected by white matter tracts, together forming one integrative complex network. The topology of this network is crucial for efficient information integration between brain regions. Here, we demonstrate that schizophrenia involves an aberrant topology of the structural infrastructure of the brain network. Using graph theoretical analysis, complex structural brain networks of 40 schizophrenia patients and 40 human healthy controls were examined. Diffusion tensor imaging was used to reconstruct the white matter connections of the brain network, with the strength of the connections defined as the level of myelination of the tracts as measured through means of magnetization transfer ratio magnetic resonance imaging. Patients displayed a preserved overall small-world network organization, but focusing on specific brain regions and their capacity to communicate with other regions of the brain revealed significantly longer node-specific path lengths (higher L) of frontal and temporal regions, especially of bilateral inferior/superior frontal cortex and temporal pole regions. These findings suggest that schizophrenia impacts global network connectivity of frontal and temporal brain regions. Furthermore, frontal hubs of patients showed a significant reduction of betweenness centrality, suggesting a less central hub role of these regions in the overall network structure. Together, our findings suggest that schizophrenia patients have a less strongly globally integrated structural brain network with a reduced central role for key frontal hubs, resulting in a limited structural capacity to integrate information across brain regions.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2a7104a0952ed046124b089f6ec4bd4fe50b76c6

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Citations in the corpus

Altered Resting State Complexity in Schizophrenia (2011, background): “…parietal and midline cortices, all regions known to show structural and functional abnormalities in schizophrenia (Anticevic et al., 2011; Arzy et al., 2006; Koch et al., 2008; Moberg et al., 1999; Nenadic et al., 2010; Salvador et al., 2010; Talamini et al., 2005; van den Heuvel et al., 2010).”
Structural connectomics in brain diseases (2013, neutral): “For example (van den Heuvel et al., 2010) reported no differences in normalized clustering coefficient and normalized characteristic path length between patients and healthy controls, partially in contrast with previous studies.”
Proportional thresholding in resting‐state fMRI functional connectivity networks and consequences for patient‐control connectome studies: Issues and recommendations (2017, positive): “Non-parametric testing by means of permutation testing (random shu ﬄ ing group assignment) (Bassett et al., 2008; van den Heuvel et al., 2010)(10,000 permutations examined) revealed similar ﬁ ndings.”
Structural foundations of resting-state and task-based functional connectivity in the human brain (2013, background): “Furthermore, alternative imaging techniques yield estimates of tract myelination [53] that can additionally be used to inform connection weights [54].”
Great Expectations: Using Whole-Brain Computational Connectomics for Understanding Neuropsychiatric Disorders (2014, background): “The study of disruptions to the normal human connectome has started to generate exciting new insights into the disrupted networks in neurological and psychiatric disorders (Van Den Heuvel et al., 2010).”
Groupwise whole-brain parcellation from resting-state fMRI data for network node identification (2013, neutral): “This atlas results in a parcellation on the order of 90 regions but different investigators have used different numbers of regions ((van den Heuvel et al., 2010), 108 regions; (Lynall et al., 2010), 72 regions; (Liu et al., 2008), 90 regions; (Supekar et al., 2008), 90 regions).”
Rich-Club Organization of the Human Connectome (2011, methodology): “First studies have identified a number of key cortical hubs (Hagmann et al., 2008; Gong et al., 2009; van den Heuvel et al., 2010), but many organizational properties of brain hubs— particularly their structural linkages— have yet to be revealed.”
Schizophrenia, neuroimaging and connectomics (2012, methodology): “As with fMRI, studies of structural dysconnectivity in schizophrenia have also reported reduced regional clustering in patients (Bassett et al., 2008; van den Heuvel et al., 2010; Table 4).”