Potential risk for healthy siblings to develop schizophrenia: evidence from pattern classification with whole-brain...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychiatry
• Genetics

Background:

• Schizophrenia is increasingly understood to have inheritable components, as suggested by prior group-level resting-state functional connectivity MRI studies.
• Investigating brain connectivity at the individual level is crucial for understanding genetic predispositions to psychiatric disorders.

Purpose of the Study:

• To utilize pattern classification to examine schizophrenia inheritance at the individual subject level.
• To analyze whole-brain resting-state functional connectivity patterns in patients with schizophrenia, their healthy siblings, and unrelated healthy controls.

Main Methods:

• Employed one-against-one pattern classification analyses across three distinct groups: schizophrenia patients, healthy siblings, and healthy controls.
• Utilized preprocessed resting-state functional connectivity MRI data to differentiate between these groups.

Main Results:

• Achieved high classification accuracy: 80.4% between schizophrenia patients and healthy controls.
• Demonstrated significant separation between schizophrenia patients and their healthy siblings (77.6%) and between healthy siblings and healthy controls (78.7%).
• Identified distinct resting-state functional connectivity patterns in healthy siblings compared to healthy controls.

Conclusions:

• Healthy siblings of schizophrenia patients exhibit altered resting-state functional connectivity, indicating a potential inherited vulnerability.
• These findings suggest that healthy siblings may possess a higher risk for developing schizophrenia than the general population.
• The unique connectivity pattern in healthy siblings, distinct from patients, may explain their normal daily functioning.