It has become clear over the past 30 years that there is no discrete “lesion” underlying
the symptoms of schizophrenia and related disorders. Rather, many investigators have
come to view schizophrenia as fundamentally a disorder of dysconnection within and
between certain functional networks in the brain (
1
). At this broad level of description, understanding the symptoms of psychosis as
emanating from dyscoordination in multiple, interacting circuits has intuitive appeal
that links key concepts and findings in the field from the time of Bleuler, with its
focus on associative loosening as a basic symptom, to the current day, with its focus
on functional neuroimaging, graph analytic approaches, and mechanisms of synaptic
plasticity. However, consensus is lacking on which networks are critically affected
and what pattern or level of dysconnection within and between them is sufficient for
expression of psychotic symptoms. In other words, at the present time, the field lacks
a theoretical framework that makes strong predictions about whether people with or
at risk for psychosis should show higher or lower levels of functional or structural
connectivity within or between any given set of brain regions (
2
).To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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References
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Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
March 18,
2015
Received:
March 17,
2015
Identification
Copyright
© 2015 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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- Discrete Alterations of Brain Network Structural Covariance in Individuals at Ultra-High Risk for PsychosisBiological PsychiatryVol. 77Issue 11
- PreviewInvestigation of aberrant large-scale brain networks offers novel insight into the role these networks play in diverse psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia. Although studies report altered functional brain connectivity in participants at ultra-high risk (UHR) for psychosis, it is unclear whether these alterations extend to structural brain networks.
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