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Neurobiological Divergence of the Positive and Negative Schizophrenia Subtypes Identified on a New Factor Structure of Psychopathology Using Non-negative Factorization: An International Machine Learning Study
Affiliations
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Brain and Behaviour (INM-7), Research Center Jülich, Jülich, Germany
- Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
Affiliations
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Brain and Behaviour (INM-7), Research Center Jülich, Jülich, Germany
- Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
Correspondence
- Address correspondence to Kaustubh R. Patil, Ph.D., Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany, or Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Brain and Behaviour (INM-7), Research Center Jülich, 52428 Jülich, Germany.
Correspondence information about the author Kaustubh R. PatilAffiliations
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Brain and Behaviour (INM-7), Research Center Jülich, Jülich, Germany
- Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
Correspondence
- Address correspondence to Kaustubh R. Patil, Ph.D., Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany, or Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Brain and Behaviour (INM-7), Research Center Jülich, 52428 Jülich, Germany.
Affiliations
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Brain and Behaviour (INM-7), Research Center Jülich, Jülich, Germany
- Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
Affiliations
- Department of General Psychiatry, Institute of Mental Health, Singapore
- Research Division, Institute of Mental Health, Singapore
Affiliations
- Iowa Neuroscience Institute, Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa
- Department of Psychiatry, Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa
Affiliations
- Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuroscience and Behavioral Disorders Program, Duke–National University of Singapore Medical School, Singapore
Affiliations
- Department of Neuroscience, University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
Affiliations
- Department of Neuroscience, University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
- BCN Neuroimaging Center, University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
Affiliations
- Rob Giel Research Center, University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
Affiliations
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Brain and Behaviour (INM-7), Research Center Jülich, Jülich, Germany
- Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
Affiliations
- Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
- Jülich Aachen Research Alliance–Institute Brain Structure Function Relationship, Research Center Jülich, and RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
Affiliations
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
Affiliations
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Brain and Behaviour (INM-7), Research Center Jülich, Jülich, Germany
- Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
Affiliations
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Brain and Behaviour (INM-7), Research Center Jülich, Jülich, Germany
- Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
Affiliations
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
Affiliations
- Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
- Jülich Aachen Research Alliance–Institute Brain Structure Function Relationship, Research Center Jülich, and RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
Affiliations
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan
Affiliations
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan
Affiliations
- Department of Neuroradiology, Rechts der Isar Hospital, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
Affiliations
- University of Lille, National Centre for Scientific Research, UMR 9193, SCALab and CHU Lille, Fontan Hospital, CURE platform, Lille, France
Affiliations
- Section for Experimental Psychopathology and Neuroimaging, Department of General Psychiatry, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany
Affiliations
- Department of Radiology and Institute for Informatics, School of Medicine, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri
Affiliations
- Center for Biomedical Image Computing and Analytics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Department of Radiology, Section of Biomedical Image Analysis, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Affiliations
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Brain and Behaviour (INM-7), Research Center Jülich, Jülich, Germany
- Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
Pharmacotherapy Monitoring and Outcome Survey (PHAMOUS) Investigators
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Figure 1
Split-half cross-validation (10,000 repetitions) of stability and generalizability of the factor solutions derived by orthonormal projective non-negative matrix factorization. The 3 indices—adjusted Rand index (aRI), variation of information (VI), and concordance index (CI)—demonstrate the factor stability, while out-of-sample increased reconstruction error (RE) reflects the performance of generalizability. Box plots show stability and generalizability results of the factor solutions. Higher values for aRI and CI (upper row) indicate higher stability. Lower values for VI and out-of-sample increase in RE (bottom row) indicate better stability and generalizability, respectively. For the box plots, the red line depicts the median, the green diamond depicts the mean, and the whiskers represent the 5th and 95th percentiles. For the factor models, the weight of an item in assigning to a specific psychopathological factor (columns of the matrix) is color-coded according to the coefficients by a heat color map from gray (minimum) to dark red (maximum). (A) The best factor solution derived from the Pharmacotherapy Monitoring and Outcome Survey (PHAMOUS) data (1545 patients) is shown. According to the 4 aforementioned evaluation indices, a 3-factor model was indicated as the best because both the mean and median values for VI and out-of-sample increase in RE achieve the lowest, while the aRI and CI reach the highest, at that point. (B) The best factor solution derived from the international sample (490 patients) is shown. Four factors is the optimal solution because the mean and median values of VI and out-of-sample increase in RE achieve the local minimum, while the aRI reaches maximum and the CI reaches a local maximum. (C) The best factor solution identified by the bootstrap comparison of the two datasets (PHAMOUS vs. international) is shown. A 4-factor solution is optimal because the mean and median values of the aRI and CI reach the maximum, while the mean and median values of VI and the median value of out-of-sample increase in RE achieve the minimum. (D) The most stable and generalizable 4-factor structure derived from the PHAMOUS sample, serving as the best basis for future studies, is shown. This 4-factor model consists of a negative (factor 1), a positive (factor 2), an affective (factor 3), and a cognitive (factor 4) factor that were named based on the items they contained. PANSS, Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale.

Figure 2
Inter-item correlations, relationship between factors, sociodemographic information, and clinical information. The 4-factor structure, derived from the Pharmacotherapy Monitoring and Outcome Survey sample with initial measure of Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) scores, was adopted as the reference on which the international sample was projected to derive the factor loadings. (A, B) Heat maps show interitem correlations for the original PANSS subscales (A) and the current orthonormal projective non-negative matrix factorization (OPNMF) 4-factor representation of psychopathology after controlling for symptom severity (total PANSS score) (B). Correlation strength is color-coded (light yellow to red: positive correlations; cyan to blue: negative correlations). (C) Box plot shows the bootstrap results (repeated 10,000 times) for the Pearson correlations among the 4-factor loadings. Bootstrap samples were drawn with replacement from the original international sample, and then the correlation analysis was done on them. The red line depicts the median, the green diamond depicts the mean, and the whiskers represent the 5th and 95th percentiles. (D, E) Graphs show effects of sociodemographic and clinical features on the 4-factor loadings. (D). Scatter plots show 4-way analysis of variance results of the significant negative association between age (adjusted for gender, illness duration, and total PANSS score) and the cognitive loading (p = .033) as well as the significant positive associations between the symptom severity (total PANSS score) and the 4-factor loadings (negative: p = 4.98 × 10−105; positive: p = 2.52 × 10–51; affective: p = 1.75 × 10−133; cognitive: p = 1.58 × 10−106) after adjusting for age, gender, and illness duration. Regression lines are depicted with a 95% confidence interval on the fitted values. (E) Bootstrap results for the 4-way analysis of variance are shown. Bootstrap samples were drawn with replacement from the original international sample and then the analyses of variance were done on them. Boxes refer to the beta values. The red line depicts the median, the green diamond depicts the mean, and the whiskers represent the 5th and 95th percentiles. *Median, p < .05; **Mean and median, p < .05.

Figure 3
Fuzzy c-means clustering results of patient subgroups based on the loadings of the generalizable 4-factor structure. (A) The internal validity indices used for determining the optimal cluster number are shown. Higher values of fuzzy silhouette index (in triangle) and lower values of Xie and Beni index and partition entropy (in inverted triangle) indicate a better clustering quality. The maximum for fuzzy silhouette index and the minimums for Xie and Beni index and partition entropy all suggested a 2-cluster solution. Fuzzy silhouette index and Xie and Beni index reflect the compactness and separation of the generated clusters, while partition entropy reflects the fuzziness of the cluster partition, that is, the uncertainty of the patients to be assigned to a certain cluster. (B) Box plot shows results of the assessment of clustering stability based on the subsampling technique. The cluster number 2 reaches the highest adjusted Rand index. Adjusted Rand index reflects the convergent assignment of the patient pairs to the clusters between the subsamples and the original sample. (C) Four-dimensional visualization of the optimal 3 Gaussian mixture modeling (GMM) clusters determined by the Bayesian information criterion is shown (a higher value indicates a better clustering solution). Magnitude of the cognitive loading was color-coded differently for the 3 clusters (cluster 1 corresponds to the cluster I [i.e., subtype A] in fuzzy c-means, yellow to Modena; cluster 2 corresponds to the cluster II [i.e., subtype B] in fuzzy c-means, blue to shallow flax; cluster 3 is the excluded diffused cluster that would not present any specific subtype, black to light gray). (D) Box plot shows the fuzzy c-means membership likelihoods of the patients inside and outside the intersection of the c-means and GMM clustering results. The black line indicates a heuristic cutoff of .70. (E) A 4-dimensional (4-D) visualization of the optimal fuzzy c-means 2-cluster solution is shown. Ambiguous assignments were defined by membership likelihoods < .70, which was selected by interacting with GMM. Those subtype-ambiguous patients are shown in small dots, and X represents the centroid. Magnitude of the cognitive loading is color-coded differently for the two clusters (cluster I, yellow to Modena; cluster II, blue to shallow flax). (F) Grouped box plots show the between-subtype (without subtype-ambiguous patients) comparison results of the 4-factor loadings, age, illness duration, and total Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) score. Cluster I is dominated by negative and affective symptoms (i.e., subtype A), and cluster II is significantly prominent in positive symptom expressions (i.e., subtype B). The black dashed line depicts the median, the yellow diamond depicts the mean, and the whiskers represent the 5th and 95th percentiles. *p < .01; **p < .001.

Figure 4
Classifying psychopathological subtypes from resting-state functional connectivity. (A) The brain parcellation scheme (600 cortical parcels plus 36 subcortical parcels) and the resting-state functional connectivity matrix that was constructed based on this parcellation system are illustrated. In parcelwise classification analysis, one column of the connectivity matrix was taken to represent the functional connectivity pattern for a single parcel. (B) Cortical surface rendering and subcortical axial slices show parcelwise classification results for those parcels that survived false discovery rate (FDR) correction (q < .05), demonstrating a neurobiological divergence between the two identified psychopathological subtypes of schizophrenia. (C) Cortical surface rendering and subcortical axial slices show parcelwise classification results for the whole brain. The balanced classification accuracy is color-coded from light gray to dark red.
Abstract
Background
Disentangling psychopathological heterogeneity in schizophrenia is challenging, and previous results remain inconclusive. We employed advanced machine learning to identify a stable and generalizable factorization of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale and used it to identify psychopathological subtypes as well as their neurobiological differentiations.
Methods
Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale data from the Pharmacotherapy Monitoring and Outcome Survey cohort (1545 patients; 586 followed up after 1.35 ± 0.70 years) were used for learning the factor structure by an orthonormal projective non-negative factorization. An international sample, pooled from 9 medical centers across Europe, the United States, and Asia (490 patients), was used for validation. Patients were clustered into psychopathological subtypes based on the identified factor structure, and the neurobiological divergence between the subtypes was assessed by classification analysis on functional magnetic resonance imaging connectivity patterns.
Results
A 4-factor structure representing negative, positive, affective, and cognitive symptoms was identified as the most stable and generalizable representation of psychopathology. It showed higher internal consistency than the original Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale subscales and previously proposed factor models. Based on this representation, the positive–negative dichotomy was confirmed as the (only) robust psychopathological subtypes, and these subtypes were longitudinally stable in about 80% of the repeatedly assessed patients. Finally, the individual subtype could be predicted with good accuracy from functional connectivity profiles of the ventromedial frontal cortex, temporoparietal junction, and precuneus.
Conclusions
Machine learning applied to multisite data with cross-validation yielded a factorization generalizable across populations and medical systems. Together with subtyping and the demonstrated ability to predict subtype membership from neuroimaging data, this work further disentangles the heterogeneity in schizophrenia.
Keywords:
Brain imaging, Machine learning, Multivariate classification, Non-negative factorization, Schizophrenia, SubtypingSchizophrenia is a heterogeneous disorder with marked interindividual variability of psychopathology, which is related to treatment response and long-term outcomes (1x1Lally, J. and MacCabe, J.H. Antipsychotic medication in schizophrenia: A review. Br Med Bull. 2015;
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The 3 PANSS subscales (negative, positive, and general psychopathology) are generally suggested to not optimally and adequately capture the latent organization of schizophrenia symptomatology; items within a subscale show modest internal consistency (5x5Peralta, V. and Cuesta, M.J. Psychometric properties of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) in schizophrenia. Psychiatry Res. 1994;
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Google ScholarSee all References). Interpretations of previous factor models are, furthermore, complicated by lack of sparsity (all items contribute to any factor) (16x16Trninić, V., Jelaska, I., and Štalec, J. Appropriateness and limitations of factor analysis methods utilized in psychology and kinesiology: Part II. Fizička Kultura. 2013;
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Google ScholarSee all References), with added concerns related to longitudinal stability and neurobiological differentiability. These aspects are particularly relevant in the emerging context of precision psychiatry and raise the following questions: Do psychopathological subtypes represent stable patient characteristics, and do they relate to divergent neurobiological substrates that are identifiable from brain imaging data? Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) parameters may serve as an endophenotype, underpinning the symptomatic heterogeneity (21x21Gottesman II and Gould, T.D. The endophenotype concept in psychiatry: Etymology and strategic intentions. Am J Psychiatry. 2003;
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Google ScholarSee all References23). However, whether and to what extent the brain functional connectivity (FC) could discriminate psychopathological subtypes remains unknown. A successful classification using endophenotypical characteristics would support distinctiveness of symptomatically derived schizophrenia subtypes expressed along the cardinal axes of psychopathology.
In the current study, we addressed the aforementioned questions as follows: 1) a robust, cross-validated, and interpretable factor structure of schizophrenia psychopathology was identified based on PANSS scores of more than 2000 patients using an unsupervised machine learning approach (orthonormal projective non-negative matrix factorization [OPNMF]) (24x24Varikuti, D.P., Genon, S., Sotiras, A., Schwender, H., Hoffstaedter, F., Patil, K.R. et al. Evaluation of non-negative matrix factorization of grey matter in age prediction. NeuroImage. 2018;
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108: 1–16
Google ScholarSee all References, 26x26Sotiras, A., Toledo, J.B., Gur, R.E., Gur, R.C., Satterthwaite, T.D., and Davatzikos, C. Patterns of coordinated cortical remodeling during adolescence and their associations with functional specialization and evolutionary expansion. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017;
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Google ScholarSee all References); 2) core schizophrenia subtypes were derived by applying soft clustering to the identified factor structure, whose longitudinal stability was evaluated in repeatedly assessed patients; and 3) neurobiological differentiation of those subtypes based on resting-state FC (rsFC) patterns was investigated by cross-validated classification analysis, serving as a biological validation of a clinical (multivariate) construct.
Methods and Materials
Sample
We used 2 large datasets collectively providing individual-item PANSS scores for 2035 patients with schizophrenia: 1) a subset of 1545 patients (586 followed up after 1.35 ± 0.70 years) with complete individual-item PANSS scores and a diagnosis of schizophrenia (DSM-IV criteria) retrieved from the Pharmacotherapy Monitoring and Outcome Survey (PHAMOUS) database (28x28Bartels-Velthuis, A.A., Visser, E., Arends, J., Pijnenborg, G.H.M., Wunderink, L., Jörg, F. et al. Towards a comprehensive routine outcome monitoring program for people with psychotic disorders: The Pharmacotherapy Monitoring and Outcome Survey (PHAMOUS). Schizophr Res. 2018;
197: 281–287
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Google ScholarSee all References29) (this dataset was recruited from 4 institutions located in The Netherlands and assessed with a uniform protocol); 2) a deliberately heterogeneous sample pooled from 9 centers located in Europe, the United States, and Asia (490 patients) (Table 1Table 1 and Supplemental Table S1Supplemental Table S1). This international dataset covers a broad range of clinical states, settings, and medical systems, making it ideal to evaluate the generalization of our factor model to new and diverse populations. Diagnoses in the international sample were established based on the DSM-IV, DSM-IV-TR, or DSM-5 criteria (SupplementSupplement). At all sites, data were acquired in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and after obtaining informed consent from the patients. Approval for the pooled reanalysis was obtained from the ethics committee of the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf.
| Characteristic | PHAMOUS Sample (N = 1545) | International Dataset From Nine Centers (N = 490) | International Dataset With Imaging (N = 147) | Statistic | p Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Demographic | |||||
| Age, yearsa | 44.15 (11.42) | 33.82 (10.28) | 34.89 (11.67) | 183.51 | <.001 |
| Gender, male/female, n | 1108/437 | 333/157 | 102/45 | 2.45 | .292 |
| Illness duration, yearsb | 18.22 (10.54) | 9.13 (8.98) | 11.37 (10.36) | 134.71 | <.001 |
| PANSS | |||||
| Positivec | 12.48 (4.91) | 14.24 (5.76) | 15.36 (5.50) | 37 | <.001 |
| Negative | 14.60 (6.20) | 14.67 (7.21) | 15.07 (6.06) | 0.375 | .687 |
| Generald | 26.70 (8.16) | 29.10 (11.34) | 30.93 (10.97) | 23.67 | <.001 |
| Symptom severity, total PANSS scoree | 53.78 (16.35) | 58.01 (21.87) | 61.36 (19.57) | 19.48 | <.001 |
| P3 item scoref | 2.30 (1.47) | 2.66 (1.83) | 3.22 (1.91) | 28.18 | <.001 |
| Medicationg | |||||
| Atypical antipsychotics | NA | 167 (34.1%) | 110 (74.8%) | ||
| Typical antipsychotics | NA | 26 (5.3%) | 8 (5.4%) | ||
| Both atypical and typical antipsychotics | NA | 16 (3.3%) | 9 (6.1%) | ||
| None or unknown | NA | 281 (57.3%) | 20 (25.9%) | ||
| Current antipsychotic medicationh | NA | 19.64 (14.15) | 19.30 (12.57) |
Data are mean (SD) or n (%). p Values of <.001 indicate a significance of p < .05. Except for gender, which was based on χ2 test, all other statistics were based on 1-way analyses of variance. Of note, because the detailed medication information was missing for several patients in different proportions for those with or without imaging data in the international dataset, statistical comparisons were not conducted.
Post hoc analysis after 1-way analyses of variance showing significant pairwise differences among the 3 datasets are indicated in the footnotes.
NA, not available; PANSS, Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale; PHAMOUS, Pharmacotherapy Monitoring and Outcome Survey; P3 item measures hallucinatory behavior.
Factorization of PANSS Using OPNMF
OPNMF (25x25Sotiras, A., Resnick, S.M., and Davatzikos, C. Finding imaging patterns of structural covariance via non-negative matrix factorization. NeuroImage. 2015;
108: 1–16
Google ScholarSee all References25,27x27Yang, Z. and Oja, E. Linear and nonlinear projective nonnegative matrix factorization. IEEE Trans Neural Netw. 2010;
21: 734–749
Google ScholarSee all References27) decomposes given data (PANSS) into 2 non-negative matrices: 1) a basis matrix (dictionary) with factors as columns that can be readily generalized to new data owing to the projective constraint and 2) a factor-loading matrix representing symptomatology of individual patients along these factors. The orthonormality constraint promotes a sparse, and hence interpretable, representation. For choosing the number of factors, a set of sophisticated evaluation strategies was implemented (see SupplementSupplement and Supplemental Figures S1 and S2Supplemental Figures S1 and S2).
We first applied OPNMF to the PANSS scores from the 1545 PHAMOUS patients with the number of factors ranging from 2 to 11. The optimal number of factors was identified by using cross-validation in 10,000 split-half analyses. The PHAMOUS sample was split into two halves, and on each split sample OPNMF was performed to derive the dictionary. The congruency between item-to-factor assignments, based on its largest coefficient, was assessed using the adjusted Rand index (30x30Hubert, L. and Arabie, P. Comparing partitions. J Classif. 1985;
12: 193–218
Google ScholarSee all References30) and variation of information (31x31Meilă, M. Comparing clusterings—An information based distance. J Multivar Anal. 2007;
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Google ScholarSee all References31) along with the concordance index (32x32Raguideau, S., Plancade, S., Pons, N., Leclerc, M., and Laroche, B. Inferring aggregated functional traits from metagenomic data using constrained non-negative matrix factorization: Application to fiber degradation in the human gut microbiota. PLoS Comput Biol. 2016;
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Google ScholarSee all References32) between the dictionaries. We also quantified out-of-sample reconstruction error by projecting the data of one split sample onto the dictionary from the other split sample. A lower increase in out-of-sample error compared with within-sample reconstruction error indicates better generalizability. This split-sample analysis was repeated on the international dataset. Additional bootstrap and 10-fold cross-validation analyses were conducted on each of the 2 samples independently.
Most critically, we assessed stability and generalizability between the factorizations of the PHAMOUS sample (good for learning a structure owing to size) and the international sample (good for validation owing to heterogeneity). We performed OPNMF independently on the bootstrapped samples from each dataset. The resulting factorizations were then compared using the approaches described above. That is, for each number of factors, we assessed stability by comparing the dictionaries obtained from factorization of bootstrapped samples (PHAMOUS vs. international). Most important, we also evaluated generalization to new data by measuring the increase in reconstruction error for the international data following projection onto the PHAMOUS dictionary. This cross-sample evaluation was repeated after accounting for between-dataset differences in sample size, age, and illness duration (SupplementSupplement). Leave-one-site-out validation was performed on both the PHAMOUS and international samples to check for site bias. We also repeated all analyses after removing outliers or including the repeated PANSS measurements (SupplementSupplement). Factorizations of the pooled (PHAMOUS + international) sample, as well as the stability and accuracy of PHAMOUS-generated dictionaries in estimating out-of-sample loadings or item scores, were also assessed (SupplementSupplement).
After identifying the optimal PANSS factorization, the international sample was projected onto this PHAMOUS-derived dictionary to obtain factor loadings for subsequent analyses (except for longitudinal analysis because reassessments were available only in the PHAMOUS sample) to avoid double dipping or leakage that would occur if scores were analyzed in the same dataset used to derive the dictionary.
Internal Consistency and Relationship Among Variables
Internal consistency of the optimal OPNMF model, as well as the PANSS subscales (as reference), was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha, where higher values indicate more closely related items within a set. Relationships between the OPNMF factor loadings were assessed using linear and partial correlations (controlling for symptom severity, i.e., total PANSS score), including bootstrap stability analyses (SupplementSupplement). The OPNMF factor loadings were correlated with the 3 PANSS subscales. Correlations between individual items were also computed. For comparison, we performed an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on the PHAMOUS sample and a confirmatory factor analysis on the international sample as well as a principal component analysis on both samples (SupplementSupplement). Effects of gender, age, illness duration, and symptom severity on the OPNMF factor loadings were analyzed in the international sample (N = 393 with complete information). Following a multivariate analysis of variance to assess effects on all the loadings, individual 4-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were performed on each loading to identify its association with the demographic and clinical features (corroborated by bootstrap and leave-one-site-out analyses) (SupplementSupplement). Current drug dosages of antipsychotic medication, available for 149 patients, were olanzapine-equivalent transformed (33x33Gardner, D.M., Murphy, A.L., O’Donnell, H., Centorrino, F., and Baldessarini, R.J. International consensus study of antipsychotic dosing. Am J Psychiatry. 2010;
167: 686–693
Google ScholarSee all References33) and included in the 4-way ANOVA models for a supplementary analysis.
Psychopathological Subtypes
After adjusting for age, gender, illness duration, and symptom severity, factor loadings were used as features for clustering patients into psychopathological subtypes. After confirming the data clusterability (34x34Lawson, R.G. and Jurs, P.C. New index for clustering tendency and its application to chemical problems. J Chem Inf Comput Sci. 1990;
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Google ScholarSee all References34), we applied fuzzy c-means clustering (35x35Bezdek, J.C. Objective function clustering. in: Pattern Recognition With Fuzzy Objective Function Algorithms. Springer,
New York; 1981: 43–93
Google ScholarSee all References35), which provided cluster membership likelihoods for all patients. The optimal cluster number was determined based on the fuzzy silhouette index (36x36Campello, R.J. and Hruschka, E.R. A fuzzy extension of the silhouette width criterion for cluster analysis. Fuzzy Sets Syst. 2006;
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Google ScholarSee all References36), the Xie and Beni index (37x37Xie, X.L. and Beni, G. A validity measure for fuzzy clustering. IEEE Trans Pattern Anal Mach Intell. 1991;
13: 841–847
Google ScholarSee all References37), and partition entropy (35x35Bezdek, J.C. Objective function clustering. in: Pattern Recognition With Fuzzy Objective Function Algorithms. Springer,
New York; 1981: 43–93
Google ScholarSee all References35). Stability was tested by leave-one-site-out replication, subsampling, and bootstrap resampling (SupplementSupplement). Given the heterogeneous nature of schizophrenia and the observation of multiple patients with ambiguous memberships, a cutoff over the membership likelihoods was adopted to remove cluster-ambiguous patients. For this, additional evidence from Gaussian mixture modeling (GMM) was considered. Specifically, patients were clustered again using GMM, and the optimal cluster number was determined by Bayesian information criterion (38x38Fraley, C. and Raftery, A.E. Model-based clustering, discriminant analysis, and density estimation. J Am Stat Assoc. 2002;
97: 611–631
Google ScholarSee all References38). After assigning patients to the clusters, we took the intersection of the c-means and GMM results. A cutoff was chosen, based on the c-means membership likelihoods that well discriminated the patients inside the intersection from those outside, while also retaining a decent sample size for classification. This filtering step is critical because ambiguous patients might obscure otherwise classifiable rsFC patterns for the identified subtypes. Afterward, differences between subtypes regarding factor loadings and demographic and clinical features were ascertained by permutation tests (39x39Kaiser, J. An exact and a Monte Carlo proposal to the Fisher-Pitman permutation tests for paired replicates and for independent samples. Stata J. 2007;
7: 402–412
Google ScholarSee all References39). To assess longitudinal stability, the same c-means clustering was applied to the repeated assessments of the PHAMOUS sample. The optimal dictionary, identified on the 1545 PHAMOUS patients without repeatedly assessed PANSS scores, was used for projection to yield the factor loadings. After excluding ambiguous cases, patients assigned to the same clusters in both initial and follow-up stages were regarded as longitudinally stable (SupplementSupplement). For comparison, the same clustering was also performed on the factor loadings without any covariates or symptom severity adjustment as well as on the PANSS subscales or items both with and without covariates adjustment (SupplementSupplement).
Classifying Psychopathological Subtypes From rsFC
Multivariate classification analysis was conducted on patients from the international sample for whom imaging data were available after excluding those with ambiguous subtype assignment, low image quality, or excessive head motion (n = 84) (Supplemental Figure S24Supplemental Figure S24). After standard preprocessing (SupplementSupplement), regional time series were extracted based on a parcellation scheme with 600 cortical parcels (40x40Schaefer, A., Kong, R., Gordon, E.M., Laumann, T., Zuo, X.N., Holmes, A. et al. Local-global parcellation of the human cerebral cortex from intrinsic functional connectivity MRI. Cereb Cortex. 2017;
28: 3095–3114
Google ScholarSee all References40) and 36 subcortical parcels (41x41Fan, L., Li, H., Zhuo, J., Zhang, Y., Wang, J., Chen, L. et al. The human Brainnetome atlas: A new brain atlas based on connectional architecture. Cereb Cortex. 2016;
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Google ScholarSee all References41), adjusted for confounders (42x42Varikuti, D.P., Hoffstaedter, F., Genon, S., Schwender, H., Reid, A.T., and Eickhoff, S.B. Resting-state test-retest reliability of a priori defined canonical networks over different preprocessing steps. Brain Struct Funct. 2017;
222: 1447–1468
Google ScholarSee all References42), and were used to compute the functional connectome. We tested each parcel for whether its pattern of rsFC to all other parcels allowed classifying subtype membership in novel subjects. Resulting parcelwise accuracies yielded a whole-brain map indicating the classifiable power of each parcel’s connectivity profile. The radial basis function kernel support vector machine classifier, which can deal with the potentially nonlinear relationship between the psychopathological and neural spaces, was employed. A stratified 10-fold cross-validation was implemented to assess the out-of-sample classification performance (Supplemental Figure S25Supplemental Figure S25). Effects of age, gender, site, illness duration, symptom severity, and head-motion parameters were adjusted using a linear regression model fitted only in the training sample (43x43Snoek, L., Miletic, S., and Scholte, H.S. How to control for confounds in decoding analyses of neuroimaging data. NeuroImage. 2019;
184: 741–760
Google ScholarSee all References43). Significance of the parcelwise accuracy was estimated by permutation tests, followed by false discovery rate correction for multiple comparisons (SupplementSupplement). Parcels surviving false discovery rate were functionally characterized (http://brainmap.org/) (44x44Genon, S., Reid, A., Langner, R., Amunts, K., and Eickhoff, S.B. How to characterize the function of a brain region. Trends Cogn Sci. 2018;
22: 350–364
Google ScholarSee all References44) (SupplementSupplement).
Results
Dimensions of Psychopathology
The most robust and generalizable model consisted of 3 factors for the PHAMOUS sample (Figure 1AFigure 1A), which effectively combined the positive and affective symptoms compared with the optimal 4-factor model for the international dataset (Figure 1BFigure 1B). The additional factor in the international dataset may relate to the higher prevalence of psychotic symptoms, particularly auditory hallucinations, compared with the PHAMOUS sample, which contains more long-term patients (Table 1Table 1). Consequently, a 4-factor model was identified as the most stable and, importantly, generalizable model of psychopathology in the cross-sample evaluation (Figure 1CFigure 1C). The first factor mainly represents negative symptoms such as blunted affect and apathy (Figure 1DFigure 1D). The second factor represents positive symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations. The third factor comprises symptoms such as depression, anxiety, and tension, reflecting an affective dimension. The fourth factor represents cognitive impairments. Notably, only a few items contributed to multiple dimensions (e.g., active social avoidance contributed to both negative and affective factors).
Figure 1
Split-half cross-validation (10,000 repetitions) of stability and generalizability of the factor solutions derived by orthonormal projective non-negative matrix factorization. The 3 indices—adjusted Rand index (aRI), variation of information (VI), and concordance index (CI)—demonstrate the factor stability, while out-of-sample increased reconstruction error (RE) reflects the performance of generalizability. Box plots show stability and generalizability results of the factor solutions. Higher values for aRI and CI (upper row) indicate higher stability. Lower values for VI and out-of-sample increase in RE (bottom row) indicate better stability and generalizability, respectively. For the box plots, the red line depicts the median, the green diamond depicts the mean, and the whiskers represent the 5th and 95th percentiles. For the factor models, the weight of an item in assigning to a specific psychopathological factor (columns of the matrix) is color-coded according to the coefficients by a heat color map from gray (minimum) to dark red (maximum). (A) The best factor solution derived from the Pharmacotherapy Monitoring and Outcome Survey (PHAMOUS) data (1545 patients) is shown. According to the 4 aforementioned evaluation indices, a 3-factor model was indicated as the best because both the mean and median values for VI and out-of-sample increase in RE achieve the lowest, while the aRI and CI reach the highest, at that point. (B) The best factor solution derived from the international sample (490 patients) is shown. Four factors is the optimal solution because the mean and median values of VI and out-of-sample increase in RE achieve the local minimum, while the aRI reaches maximum and the CI reaches a local maximum. (C) The best factor solution identified by the bootstrap comparison of the two datasets (PHAMOUS vs. international) is shown. A 4-factor solution is optimal because the mean and median values of the aRI and CI reach the maximum, while the mean and median values of VI and the median value of out-of-sample increase in RE achieve the minimum. (D) The most stable and generalizable 4-factor structure derived from the PHAMOUS sample, serving as the best basis for future studies, is shown. This 4-factor model consists of a negative (factor 1), a positive (factor 2), an affective (factor 3), and a cognitive (factor 4) factor that were named based on the items they contained. PANSS, Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale.
All findings were fully confirmed by 1) bootstrap and 10-fold cross-validation, 2) removing outliers (18 patients), 3) adding PANSS data from follow-up examination in the PHAMOUS sample, 4) leave-one-site-out validation, 5) accounting for between-dataset differences in sample size, age, and illness duration, 6) pooling the 2 datasets with cross-validation and out-of-sample generalization assessments, and 7) loading or item score predictions across factor solutions, bootstrapped samples, and sites (Supplemental Figures S3–S11Supplemental Figures S3–S11).
Internal Consistency and Relationship Among Variables
Items within a factor showed higher and more homogeneous positive correlations (and fewer anticorrelations) for the OPNMF factors than for the PANSS subscales (Figure 2A, BFigure 2A, B and Supplemental Figure S12Supplemental Figure S12). Internal consistency of our OPNMF 4-factor structure (positive: Cronbach’s alpha = .75; negative: .92; affective: .85; cognitive: .83) was on average higher than that of the PANSS subscales (positive: .72; negative: .87; general psychopathology: .87), previously reported factor models (ranging from .60 [excited] to .90 [negative]) (7x7Emsley, R., Rabinowitz, J., Torreman, M., and RIS-INT-35 Early Psychosis Global Working Group. The factor structure for the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) in recent-onset psychosis. Schizophr Res. 2003;
61: 47–57
Google ScholarSee all References, 8x8Van den Oord, E.J., Rujescu, D., Robles, J.R., Giegling, I., Birrell, C., Bukszár, József et al. Factor structure and external validity of the PANSS revisited. Schizophr Res. 2006;
82: 213–223
Google ScholarSee all References, 9x9Kim, J.H., Kim, S.Y., Lee, J., Oh, K.J., Kim, Y.B., and Cho, Z.H. Evaluation of the factor structure of symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. Psychiatry Res. 2012;
197: 285–289
Google ScholarSee all References,45x45Rodriguez-Jimenez, R., Bagney, A., Mezquita, L., Martinez-Gras, I., Sanchez-Morla, E., Mesa, N. et al. Cognition and the five-factor model of the Positive and Negative Sndrome Scale in schizophrenia. Schizophr Res. 2013;
143: 77–83
Google ScholarSee all References45), and the EFA models derived from the current sample (.49–.91) (Supplemental Table S2Supplemental Table S2). All PHAMOUS-derived 4- to 7-factor EFA models could not be confirmed in the international sample owing to inadequate fit (Supplemental Table S2Supplemental Table S2). Compared with principal component analysis, OPNMF showed better generalizability (Supplemental Figure S13Supplemental Figure S13). The positive and negative factors were highly correlated with the positive and negative PANSS subscales, respectively, both before (r = .92 and r = .97) and after (r = .85 and r = .89) controlling for symptom severity (Supplemental Figure S14Supplemental Figure S14). Interestingly, after adjusting for symptom severity, the cognitive factor did not correlate with general psychopathology (r = .02).
Figure 2
Inter-item correlations, relationship between factors, sociodemographic information, and clinical information. The 4-factor structure, derived from the Pharmacotherapy Monitoring and Outcome Survey sample with initial measure of Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) scores, was adopted as the reference on which the international sample was projected to derive the factor loadings. (A, B) Heat maps show interitem correlations for the original PANSS subscales (A) and the current orthonormal projective non-negative matrix factorization (OPNMF) 4-factor representation of psychopathology after controlling for symptom severity (total PANSS score) (B). Correlation strength is color-coded (light yellow to red: positive correlations; cyan to blue: negative correlations). (C) Box plot shows the bootstrap results (repeated 10,000 times) for the Pearson correlations among the 4-factor loadings. Bootstrap samples were drawn with replacement from the original international sample, and then the correlation analysis was done on them. The red line depicts the median, the green diamond depicts the mean, and the whiskers represent the 5th and 95th percentiles. (D, E) Graphs show effects of sociodemographic and clinical features on the 4-factor loadings. (D). Scatter plots show 4-way analysis of variance results of the significant negative association between age (adjusted for gender, illness duration, and total PANSS score) and the cognitive loading (p = .033) as well as the significant positive associations between the symptom severity (total PANSS score) and the 4-factor loadings (negative: p = 4.98 × 10−105; positive: p = 2.52 × 10–51; affective: p = 1.75 × 10−133; cognitive: p = 1.58 × 10−106) after adjusting for age, gender, and illness duration. Regression lines are depicted with a 95% confidence interval on the fitted values. (E) Bootstrap results for the 4-way analysis of variance are shown. Bootstrap samples were drawn with replacement from the original international sample and then the analyses of variance were done on them. Boxes refer to the beta values. The red line depicts the median, the green diamond depicts the mean, and the whiskers represent the 5th and 95th percentiles. *Median, p < .05; **Mean and median, p < .05.
Over individual patients, the loadings on our 4 factors were significantly intercorrelated, with negative and positive factors showing the lowest correlation (r = .32 averaged over 10,000 bootstraps) and negative and affective factors showing the highest correlation (r = .70) (Figure 2CFigure 2C). After controlling for symptom severity, positive and negative factors became anticorrelated (r = −.59) (Supplemental Figure S15Supplemental Figure S15).
Multivariate analysis of variance revealed a significant influence of symptom severity on the joint factor loadings (p < .001). Follow-up 4-way ANOVAs showed that symptom severity had a significant effect on each factor (all ps < .001, all βs > .07) (Figure 2DFigure 2D). The cognitive factor showed a trend toward a positive relationship with illness duration (p = .081, β = .014) and a significant negative relationship with age (p = .033, β = −.015) (Figure 2DFigure 2D), although both covariates were collinear (r = .65). In contrast, loadings on the negative factor were higher for older individuals (p = .11, β = .016) and lower for those with longer illness duration (p = .18, β = −.015). Gender differences were not observed in any factor. Bootstrap (Figure 2EFigure 2E) and leave-one-site-out analyses corroborated the aforementioned ANOVA findings (SupplementSupplement). Adding olanzapine-equivalent dosage to the 4-way ANOVA did not reveal any significant association with medication.
Psychopathological Subtypes
Fuzzy c-means clustering on the adjusted loadings revealed an optimal 2-cluster solution (Figure 3A, BFigure 3A, B and Supplemental Figures S16 and S17Supplemental Figures S16 and S17). Although GMM demonstrated an optimal 3-cluster solution, one of the clusters was diffusely distributed in space containing patients from both c-means clusters. This GMM cluster was excluded because it would not represent any specific subtype (Figure 3CFigure 3C). Patients inside the c-means GMM intersection had higher c-means membership likelihoods (roughly > .70) to belong to their own cluster than those outside the intersection (p < .01, Wilcoxon rank-sum test) (Figure 3DFigure 3D). We chose the cluster cores using the likelihoods of c-means with a cutoff of .70. As a result, 2 core subtypes were defined after filtering out 50 ambiguous patients from each of the 2 c-means clusters (Figure 3EFigure 3E). The first subtype showed a psychopathological profile dominated by negative and affective symptomatology (subtype A). The other subtype featured prominent positive symptoms (subtype B; all ps < .001 in permutation tests) (Figure 3FFigure 3F and Supplemental Figure S18Supplemental Figure S18). Importantly, subtypes did not differ in gender distribution, age, or illness duration (all ps > .05), but subtype B showed higher symptom severity (p = .008). The same 2-cluster solution was replicated on the PHAMOUS patients with complete demographic and clinical information (N = 1326; 56% of the 603 ambiguous patients in subtype B when hard-clustered) and on those with repeatedly assessed PANSS scores (n = 527; 45% ambiguous). Nearly 80% of the reassessed patients retained their subtype, with subtype A being more stable (85%) (SupplementSupplement). The additional clustering analyses supported our 4-factor model with covariates adjustment for a clinically meaningful subtyping (Supplemental Figures S19–S23Supplemental Figures S19–S23).
Figure 3
Fuzzy c-means clustering results of patient subgroups based on the loadings of the generalizable 4-factor structure. (A) The internal validity indices used for determining the optimal cluster number are shown. Higher values of fuzzy silhouette index (in triangle) and lower values of Xie and Beni index and partition entropy (in inverted triangle) indicate a better clustering quality. The maximum for fuzzy silhouette index and the minimums for Xie and Beni index and partition entropy all suggested a 2-cluster solution. Fuzzy silhouette index and Xie and Beni index reflect the compactness and separation of the generated clusters, while partition entropy reflects the fuzziness of the cluster partition, that is, the uncertainty of the patients to be assigned to a certain cluster. (B) Box plot shows results of the assessment of clustering stability based on the subsampling technique. The cluster number 2 reaches the highest adjusted Rand index. Adjusted Rand index reflects the convergent assignment of the patient pairs to the clusters between the subsamples and the original sample. (C) Four-dimensional visualization of the optimal 3 Gaussian mixture modeling (GMM) clusters determined by the Bayesian information criterion is shown (a higher value indicates a better clustering solution). Magnitude of the cognitive loading was color-coded differently for the 3 clusters (cluster 1 corresponds to the cluster I [i.e., subtype A] in fuzzy c-means, yellow to Modena; cluster 2 corresponds to the cluster II [i.e., subtype B] in fuzzy c-means, blue to shallow flax; cluster 3 is the excluded diffused cluster that would not present any specific subtype, black to light gray). (D) Box plot shows the fuzzy c-means membership likelihoods of the patients inside and outside the intersection of the c-means and GMM clustering results. The black line indicates a heuristic cutoff of .70. (E) A 4-dimensional (4-D) visualization of the optimal fuzzy c-means 2-cluster solution is shown. Ambiguous assignments were defined by membership likelihoods < .70, which was selected by interacting with GMM. Those subtype-ambiguous patients are shown in small dots, and X represents the centroid. Magnitude of the cognitive loading is color-coded differently for the two clusters (cluster I, yellow to Modena; cluster II, blue to shallow flax). (F) Grouped box plots show the between-subtype (without subtype-ambiguous patients) comparison results of the 4-factor loadings, age, illness duration, and total Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) score. Cluster I is dominated by negative and affective symptoms (i.e., subtype A), and cluster II is significantly prominent in positive symptom expressions (i.e., subtype B). The black dashed line depicts the median, the yellow diamond depicts the mean, and the whiskers represent the 5th and 95th percentiles. *p < .01; **p < .001.
Classifying Psychopathological Subtypes From rsFC
The rsFC profile of the parcel located in the right ventromedial prefrontal cortex yielded the highest out-of-sample classification accuracy (70% of patients not used for training were assigned to the correct psychopathological subtypes), followed by parcels in the right temporoparietal junction, bilateral precuneus, and posterior cingulate cortex (Figure 4CFigure 4C). Permutation tests showed that the top 104 classifiable parcels were significant (p < .05) against chance (i.e., randomized subtype labels), and 53 parcels survived false discovery rate correction (q < .05) (Figure 4BFigure 4B). Of note, parcels are labeled by their microanatomical location with their functional implications (Supplemental Table S4Supplemental Table S4). Classification with additional global mean signal removal or with an rsFC-based subcortical parcellation replacement (7 parcels [46x46Choi, E.Y., Yeo, B.T.T., and Buckner, R.L. The organization of the human striatum estimated by intrinsic functional connectivity. J Neurophysiol. 2012;
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Figure 4
Classifying psychopathological subtypes from resting-state functional connectivity. (A) The brain parcellation scheme (600 cortical parcels plus 36 subcortical parcels) and the resting-state functional connectivity matrix that was constructed based on this parcellation system are illustrated. In parcelwise classification analysis, one column of the connectivity matrix was taken to represent the functional connectivity pattern for a single parcel. (B) Cortical surface rendering and subcortical axial slices show parcelwise classification results for those parcels that survived false discovery rate (FDR) correction (q < .05), demonstrating a neurobiological divergence between the two identified psychopathological subtypes of schizophrenia. (C) Cortical surface rendering and subcortical axial slices show parcelwise classification results for the whole brain. The balanced classification accuracy is color-coded from light gray to dark red.
Discussion
By factorizing the PANSS scores from a large sample using OPNMF and cross-validating the results in a heterogeneous multisite dataset, we revealed a robust, replicable, and generalizable 4-factor structure comprising negative, positive, affective, and cognitive dimensions across populations, settings, and medical systems. Based on this 4-factor structure, 2 core psychopathological subtypes were obtained that showed good longitudinal stability and could be discriminated by regional rsFC patterns, with the right ventromedial prefrontal cortex showing the highest (70%) classification accuracy.
Relationship to Previous Factor Models of PANSS
The 3 PANSS subscales do not reflect the latent structure of this inventory well (5x5Peralta, V. and Cuesta, M.J. Psychometric properties of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) in schizophrenia. Psychiatry Res. 1994;
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61: 47–57
Google ScholarSee all References). In turn, our model represents a stable, generalizable, and well-interpretable description of schizophrenia psychopathology suited for representing the full range of acute and chronic symptoms. Resonating with this view, a pyramidical model proposed by the PANSS developers comprised 4 components (6x6Kay, S.R. and Sevy, S. Pyramidical model of schizophrenia. Schizophr Bull. 1990;
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Google ScholarSee all References6). Three of these (negative, positive, and affective dimensions) showed good agreement with our model. The fourth component, however, isolated only excitement, while cognitive disturbances were distributed across all dimensions or discarded. Such a representation is obviously at odds with the importance of cognitive dysfunction and has prompted the proposal of more complex models (7x7Emsley, R., Rabinowitz, J., Torreman, M., and RIS-INT-35 Early Psychosis Global Working Group. The factor structure for the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) in recent-onset psychosis. Schizophr Res. 2003;
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Google ScholarSee all References, 8x8Van den Oord, E.J., Rujescu, D., Robles, J.R., Giegling, I., Birrell, C., Bukszár, József et al. Factor structure and external validity of the PANSS revisited. Schizophr Res. 2006;
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Google ScholarSee all References, 9x9Kim, J.H., Kim, S.Y., Lee, J., Oh, K.J., Kim, Y.B., and Cho, Z.H. Evaluation of the factor structure of symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. Psychiatry Res. 2012;
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Google ScholarSee all References), for example, a recent 5-factor model reflecting negative, positive, depressed, excited, and cognitive dimensions (45x45Rodriguez-Jimenez, R., Bagney, A., Mezquita, L., Martinez-Gras, I., Sanchez-Morla, E., Mesa, N. et al. Cognition and the five-factor model of the Positive and Negative Sndrome Scale in schizophrenia. Schizophr Res. 2013;
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Google ScholarSee all References45). However, replicability, external validity, and generalization remain a concern for these models (47x47Lehoux, C., Gobeil, M.-H., Lefèbvre, A.-A., Maziade, M., and Roy, M.-A. The five-factor structure of the PANSS: A critical review of its consistency across studies. Clin Schizophr Relat Psychoses. 2009;
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Google ScholarSee all References13) found that none of 20 tested models fit their data adequately, and they put forward a new pentagonal model that later (together with 24 other models) also could not be confirmed (14x14van der Gaag, M., Cuijpers, A., Hoffman, T., Remijsen, M., Hijman, R., de Haan, L. et al. The five-factor model of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale I: Confirmatory factor analysis fails to confirm 25 published five-factor solutions. Schizophr Res. 2006;
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Google ScholarSee all References14). In the same study (12x12van der Gaag, M., Hoffman, T., Remijsen, M., Hijman, R., de Haan, L., van Meijel, B. et al. The five-factor model of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale II: A ten-fold cross-validation of a revised model. Schizophr Res. 2006;
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Google ScholarSee all References12), the authors developed an improved 5-factor model using 10-fold cross-validation. However, it still failed to be confirmed, along with 31 other 5-factor models, in a later study involving 2 large Chinese samples (15x15Jiang, J., Sim, K., and Lee, J. Validated five-factor model of Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale for schizophrenia in Chinese population. Schizophr Res. 2013;
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Google ScholarSee all References15). In our sample, inadequate fit for EFA models with 4 to 7 factors was also manifested, and the fifth OPNMF factor, compared with the 4 factors, showed the poorest out-of-sample loading predictions (Supplemental Figure S10BSupplemental Figure S10B). These facts, as a whole, point to a fundamental instability of 5-factor models (9x9Kim, J.H., Kim, S.Y., Lee, J., Oh, K.J., Kim, Y.B., and Cho, Z.H. Evaluation of the factor structure of symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. Psychiatry Res. 2012;
197: 285–289
Google ScholarSee all References, 10x10Levine, S.Z. and RabinowitzJ. Revisiting the 5 dimensions of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. J Clin Psychopharmacol. 2007;
27: 431–436
Google ScholarSee all References, 11x11Wallwork, R., Fortgang, R., Hashimoto, R., Weinberger, D., and Dickinson, D. Searching for a consensus five-factor model of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale for schizophrenia. Schizophr Res. 2012;
137: 246–250
Google ScholarSee all References, 12x12van der Gaag, M., Hoffman, T., Remijsen, M., Hijman, R., de Haan, L., van Meijel, B. et al. The five-factor model of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale II: A ten-fold cross-validation of a revised model. Schizophr Res. 2006;
85: 280–287
Google ScholarSee all References, 13x13White, L., Harvey, P.D., Opler, L., and Lindenmayer, J. Empirical assessment of the factorial structure of clinical symptoms in schizophrenia. Psychopathology. 1997;
30: 263–274
Google ScholarSee all References, 14x14van der Gaag, M., Cuijpers, A., Hoffman, T., Remijsen, M., Hijman, R., de Haan, L. et al. The five-factor model of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale I: Confirmatory factor analysis fails to confirm 25 published five-factor solutions. Schizophr Res. 2006;
85: 273–279
Google ScholarSee all References, 15x15Jiang, J., Sim, K., and Lee, J. Validated five-factor model of Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale for schizophrenia in Chinese population. Schizophr Res. 2013;
143: 38–43
Google ScholarSee all References,44x44Genon, S., Reid, A., Langner, R., Amunts, K., and Eickhoff, S.B. How to characterize the function of a brain region. Trends Cogn Sci. 2018;
22: 350–364
Google ScholarSee all References44). Addressing these concerns, the current work not only was based on a large sample for model identification but also, importantly, focused strongly on cross-validated stability and out-of-sample generalization. Critically, the external validation was based on a heterogeneous international sample, and the optimal model suggested a single factor to combine both the cognitive and excited symptoms. This view is corroborated by observations that cognitive and excited symptomatologies are highly correlated (45x45Rodriguez-Jimenez, R., Bagney, A., Mezquita, L., Martinez-Gras, I., Sanchez-Morla, E., Mesa, N. et al. Cognition and the five-factor model of the Positive and Negative Sndrome Scale in schizophrenia. Schizophr Res. 2013;
143: 77–83
Google ScholarSee all References45) and share similar neurobiological substrates (48x48Nishimura, Y., Takizawa, R., Muroi, M., Marumo, K., Kinou, M., and Kasai, K. Prefrontal cortex activity during response inhibition associated with excitement symptoms in schizophrenia. Brain Res. 2011;
1370: 194–203
Google ScholarSee all References48,49x49Oh, J., Chun, J.-W., Jo, H.J., Kim, E., Park, H., Lee, B. et al. The neural basis of a deficit in abstract thinking in patients with schizophrenia. Psychiatry Res Neuroimaging. 2015;
234: 66–73
Google ScholarSee all References49).
Internal Consistency and Relationship Among Variables
Although we identified the optimal representation by its robustness and ability to generalize to new populations, the positive and negative dimensions of our model also showed better internal consistency than the PANSS subscales while differentiating the broad general psychopathology. Moreover, our affective and cognitive factors showed higher internal consistency than those reported in previous factor models (7x7Emsley, R., Rabinowitz, J., Torreman, M., and RIS-INT-35 Early Psychosis Global Working Group. The factor structure for the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) in recent-onset psychosis. Schizophr Res. 2003;
61: 47–57
Google ScholarSee all References7,8x8Van den Oord, E.J., Rujescu, D., Robles, J.R., Giegling, I., Birrell, C., Bukszár, József et al. Factor structure and external validity of the PANSS revisited. Schizophr Res. 2006;
82: 213–223
Google ScholarSee all References8,10x10Levine, S.Z. and RabinowitzJ. Revisiting the 5 dimensions of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. J Clin Psychopharmacol. 2007;
27: 431–436
Google ScholarSee all References10,45x45Rodriguez-Jimenez, R., Bagney, A., Mezquita, L., Martinez-Gras, I., Sanchez-Morla, E., Mesa, N. et al. Cognition and the five-factor model of the Positive and Negative Sndrome Scale in schizophrenia. Schizophr Res. 2013;
143: 77–83
Google ScholarSee all References45). Finally, correlations between individual items within OPNMF factors were higher and more homogeneous compared with the PANSS subscales.
Matching previous reports (4x4Kay, S.R., Fiszbein, A., and Opler, L.A. The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) for schizophrenia. Schizophr Bull. 1987;
13: 261–276
Google ScholarSee all References4,8x8Van den Oord, E.J., Rujescu, D., Robles, J.R., Giegling, I., Birrell, C., Bukszár, József et al. Factor structure and external validity of the PANSS revisited. Schizophr Res. 2006;
82: 213–223
Google ScholarSee all References8,45x45Rodriguez-Jimenez, R., Bagney, A., Mezquita, L., Martinez-Gras, I., Sanchez-Morla, E., Mesa, N. et al. Cognition and the five-factor model of the Positive and Negative Sndrome Scale in schizophrenia. Schizophr Res. 2013;
143: 77–83
Google ScholarSee all References45), negative and positive factors from our model were least related before, and showed a strong anticorrelation after, controlling for symptom severity. The inverse age versus illness duration effect on negative symptoms implies that this effect may be more related to age than to illness duration. This is intriguing from the perspective of early aging or degeneration, but it needs to be viewed with caution because age and illness duration are highly correlated. Colinear variables in a single linear regression model make it difficult to disentangle their respective effects on the negative factor as well as on the cognitive factor (50x50Wurm, L.H. and Fisicaro, S.A. What residualizing predictors in regression analyses does (and what it does not do). J Mem Lang. 2014;
72: 37–48
Google ScholarSee all References50).
Psychopathological Subtypes, Longitudinal Stability, and Neurobiological Differentiability
Our results revealed 2 distinct schizophrenia subtypes featuring predominantly positive and negative symptoms, respectively. The subtypes were longitudinally stable and could be classified from neuroimaging data. Such a positive–negative dichotomy has been widely supported (51x51Kay, S.R. and Singh, M.M. The positive-negative distinction in drug-free schizophrenic patients: Stability, response to neuroleptics, and prognostic significance. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1989;
46: 711–718
Google ScholarSee all References51,52x52Andreasen, N.C. and Olsen, S. Negative v positive schizophrenia: Definition and validation. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1982;
39: 789–794
Google ScholarSee all References52). Finer distinctions have been proposed but show poor replicability (18x18Dickinson, D., Pratt, D.N., Giangrande, E.J., Grunnagle, M., Orel, J., Weinberger, D. et al. Attacking heterogeneity in schizophrenia by deriving clinical subgroups from widely available symptom data. Schizophr Bull. 2018;
44: 101–113
Google ScholarSee all References, 19x19Dollfus, S., Everitt, B., Ribeyre, J.M., Assouly-Besse, F., Sharp, C., and Petit, M. Identifying subtypes of schizophrenia by cluster analyses. Schizophr Bull. 1996;
22: 545–555
Google ScholarSee all References, 20x20Helmes, E. and Landmark, J. Subtypes of schizophrenia: A cluster analytic approach. Can J Psychiatry. 2003;
48: 702–708
Google ScholarSee all References). The inconsistency of finer subtyping may relate to idiosyncrasies in small samples from a single geographical region and to the lack of explicit analyses of stability and replicability. Moreover, longitudinal stability of our new subtypes was higher than that reported for traditional clinical subtypes or for a positive/negative/mixed topology (53x53Kendler, K.S., Gruenberg, A.M., and Tsuang, M.T. Subtype stability in schizophrenia. Am J Psychiatry. 1985;
142: 827–832
Google ScholarSee all References, 54x54Deister, A. and Marneros, A. Long-term stability of subtypes in schizophrenic disorders: A comparison of four diagnostic systems. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 1993;
242: 184–190
Google ScholarSee all References, 55x55Kulhara, P. and Chandiramani, K. Positive and negative subtypes of schizophrenia: A follow-up study from India. Schizophr Res. 1990;
3: 107–116
Google ScholarSee all References). Interestingly, we found subtype A to be particularly stable. Previous studies indicated that both mixed and negative symptom states increase over time, whereas psychotic expressions usually diminish outside acute episodes and over time (54x54Deister, A. and Marneros, A. Long-term stability of subtypes in schizophrenic disorders: A comparison of four diagnostic systems. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 1993;
242: 184–190
Google ScholarSee all References54,55x55Kulhara, P. and Chandiramani, K. Positive and negative subtypes of schizophrenia: A follow-up study from India. Schizophr Res. 1990;
3: 107–116
Google ScholarSee all References55). Future studies with a longer follow-up duration are desired; the mean of 1.35 years’ follow-up assessed in the current study is not a long period in schizophrenia. In addition, the employed soft-clustering method better accommodates ambiguous patients compared with previous hard-clustering methods, and furthermore, patients with ambiguous memberships can be filtered out with appropriate cutoffs to improve the ability of detecting neurobiological distinctions between subtypes. Nonetheless, the cutoff value chosen in the current study should be noted as heuristic. The cluster-ambiguous patients might represent a transient group lying between the two more differentiated subtypes.
The current top classifiable brain regions all are implicated in schizophrenia pathophysiology and processes relevant to the psychopathological distinction (22x22Walton, E., Hibar, D.P., van Erp, T.G.M., Potkin, S.G., Roiz-Santiañez, R., Crespo-Facorro, B. et al. Prefrontal cortical thinning links to negative symptoms in schizophrenia via the ENIGMA consortium. Psychol Med. 2018;
48: 82–94
Google ScholarSee all References22,56x56Schilbach, L., Derntl, B., Aleman, A., Caspers, S., Clos, M., Diederen, K.M.J. et al. Differential patterns of dysconnectivity in mirror neuron and mentalizing networks in schizophrenia. Schizophr Bull. 2016;
42: 1135–1148
Google ScholarSee all References, 57x57Vercammen, A., Knegtering, H., den Boer, J.A., Liemburg, E.J., and Aleman, A. Auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia are associated with reduced functional connectivity of the temporo-parietal area. Biol Psychiatry. 2010;
67: 912–918
Google ScholarSee all References, 58x58Derntl, B., Finkelmeyer, A., Eickhoff, S., Kellermann, T., Falkenberg, D.I., Schneider, F. et al. Multidimensional assessment of empathic abilities: Neural correlates and gender differences. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2010;
35: 67–82
Google ScholarSee all References, 59x59Nenadic, I., Yotter, R.A., Sauer, H., and Gaser, C. Patterns of cortical thinning in different subgroups of schizophrenia. Br J Psychiatry. 2015;
206: 479–483
Google ScholarSee all References, 60x60Shaffer, J.J., Peterson, M.J., McMahon, M.A., Bizzell, J., Calhoun, V., van Erp, T.G.M. et al. Neural correlates of schizophrenia negative symptoms: Distinct subtypes impact dissociable brain circuits. Mol Neuropsychiatry. 2015;
1: 191–200
Google ScholarSee all References). Previous findings in the literature relating fMRI parameters to differential symptoms exclusively relied on group-level analyses, while our approach bridged an important gap between neurobiological divergence and distinct symptomatic patterns at the individual level. To our knowledge, it is the first study to successfully classify psychopathological subtypes in schizophrenia. Of note, the current classification accuracy was similar to accuracy levels previously reported for classifications of patients with schizophrenia versus healthy participants (61x61Orban, P., Dansereau, C., Desbois, L., Mongeau-Pérusse, V., Giguère, C.E., Nguyen, H. et al. Multisite generalizability of schizophrenia diagnosis classification based on functional brain connectivity. Schizophr Res. 2018;
192: 167–171
Google ScholarSee all References, 62x62Mikolas, P., Melicher, T., Skoch, A., Slovakova, A., Matejka, M., Rydlo, J. et al. Diagnostic classification of patients with first-episode schizophrenia spectrum disorders from resting-fMRI. Eur Neuropsychopharmacol. 2016;
26: S490
Google ScholarSee all References, 63x63Rozycki, M., Satterthwaite, T.D., Koutsouleris, N., Erus, G., Doshi, J., Wolf, D.H. et al. Multisite machine learning analysis provides a robust structural imaging signature of schizophrenia detectable across diverse patient populations and within individuals. Schizophr Bull. 2017;
44: 1035–1044
Google ScholarSee all References). The demonstrated neurobiological differentiability corroborates the currently identified schizophrenia subtypes expressed along the 4 OPNMF dimensions.
Limitations and Considerations
We assessed factor structure, subtypes, and their neurobiological differentiations with a particular emphasis on robustness and generalization. This conservative approach seems necessary given current concerns of nonreplicability in biomedical research, but it might have contributed to the fact that we corroborated the clinically well-established positive–negative distinction rather than identifying more differentiated subtypes. We note, however, that a recent imaging-based clustering also provided evidence for 2 subtypes (64x64Sun, H., Lui, S., Yao, L., Deng, W., Xiao, Y., Zhang, W. et al. Two patterns of white matter abnormalities in medication-naive patients with first-episode schizophrenia revealed by diffusion tensor imaging and cluster analysis. JAMA Psychiatry. 2015;
72: 678–686
Google ScholarSee all References64), and we stress that the current analysis of a large heterogeneous sample did not reveal any evidence for a more fine-grained differentiation among the patients. Thus, it remains to be seen whether an additional differentiation between these 2 core subtypes may be robustly revealed by analyzing substantially larger samples or whether previously proposed additional subtypes represent distinctions that could be found in a particular dataset but are not universally present. We also acknowledge that patients were on their regular medication as prescribed by the attending psychiatrists, and thus the current results might be confounded by direct and indirect mediation effects thereof. However, it stands to reason that a multisite study, pooling patients from different psychiatrists with differential medication strategies, will render medication largely as a source of random variation in our data. Such noise would effectively make it harder to identify generalizable psychopathological factors and robust subtypes and, in particular, to train models that work well for out-of-sample classification of subtype membership. Thus, we would argue that the current results should not be driven by medication effects but rather represent general structures of psychopathology and schizophrenia subtypes. In addition, rsfMRI has its own limitations such as variability across scanning sessions and the issue of confounding factors (42x42Varikuti, D.P., Hoffstaedter, F., Genon, S., Schwender, H., Reid, A.T., and Eickhoff, S.B. Resting-state test-retest reliability of a priori defined canonical networks over different preprocessing steps. Brain Struct Funct. 2017;
222: 1447–1468
Google ScholarSee all References42,65x65Zuo, X.N., Kelly, C., Adelstein, J.S., Klein, D.F., Castellanos, F.X., and Milham, M.P. Reliable intrinsic connectivity networks: Test–retest evaluation using ICA and dual regression approach. NeuroImage. 2010;
49: 2163–2177
Google ScholarSee all References65,66x66Bright, M.G., Tench, C.R., and Murphy, K. Potential pitfalls when denoising resting state fMRI data using nuisance regression. NeuroImage. 2017;
154: 159–168
Google ScholarSee all References66). We focused on rsfMRI because it could temporally better map the likewise state-dependent psychopathology compared with structural MRI.
Using advanced machine learning with cross-sample validation, the current study suggested a stable and generalizable 4-factor model of PANSS. This representation allowed for the definition of a reliable positive–negative subtype differentiation that showed good longitudinal stability and a neurobiological divergence in rsFC. Overall, the current work further disentangled the heterogeneity of schizophrenia, possibly allowing for the design of more specifically targeted treatments.
Acknowledgments and Disclosures
This study was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Grant No. EI 816/4-1 [to SBE]), the National Institute of Mental Health (Grant No. R01-MH074457 [to SBE]), the Helmholtz Portfolio Theme “Supercomputing and Modeling for the Human Brain,” and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant Nos. 720270 [HBP SGA1] [to SBE] and 785907 [HBP SGA2] [to SBE]). JC received a Ph.D. fellowship from the Chinese Scholarship Council (Grant No. CSC201609350006). VAD acknowledges support from the National Institutes of Mental Health (Grant No. 1R01 MH111177), and the Cohen Neuroscience Endowment.
We acknowledge Asadur Chowdury (Brain Imaging Research Division, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, Michigan), who contributed to the early arrangement and communication of the Wayne State dataset. Acknowledgments also go to Laura Waite (Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Brain and Behaviour [INM-7], Research Center Jülich, Jülich, Germany) for proofreading.
A Dimensions and Clustering Tool for assessing schizophrenia Symptomatology (DCTS) is available at http://webtools.inm7.de/sczDCTS/.
The authors report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.
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References
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PHAMOUS investigators: Agna A. Bartels-Velthuis (University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, University Center for Psychiatry, Rob Giel Research Center; Lentis Psychiatric Institute, Groningen, The Netherlands), Richard Bruggeman (University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, University Center for Psychiatry, Rob Giel Research Center and Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, Department of Clinical Psychology and Developmental Neuropsychology, Groningen, The Netherlands), Stynke Castelein (Lentis Psychiatric Institute; University of Groningen, Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, Department of Clinical Psychology and Experimental Psychopathology, Groningen, The Netherlands), Frederike Jörg (GGZ Friesland Mental Health Care Organization, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands), Gerdina H.M. Pijnenborg (University of Groningen, Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, Department of Clinical Psychology and Experimental Psychopathology; GGZ Drenthe Mental Health Care Organization, Dennenweg; University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, University Center for Psychiatry, Psychosis Department, Groningen, The Netherlands), Henderikus Knegtering (University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, University Center for Psychiatry, Rob Giel Research Center; Lentis Psychiatric Institute, Groningen, The Netherlands), and Ellen Visser (University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, University Center for Psychiatry, Rob Giel Research Center, Groningen, The Netherlands).
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