Decreased resting-state brain activity complexity in schizophrenia characterized by both increased regularity and...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychiatry
• Complexity Science

Background:

• Schizophrenia exhibits diverse underlying pathophysiology.
• Multiscale entropy (MSE) analysis quantifies time series complexity.
• Blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signals reflect neural activity.

Purpose of the Study:

• Characterize MSE patterns of BOLD signals in schizophrenia.
• Determine if BOLD activity complexity changes toward regularity or randomness.
• Correlate complexity changes with schizophrenia symptom domains.

Main Methods:

• Recruited 105 schizophrenia patients and 210 healthy controls.
• Applied MSE analysis to resting-state BOLD signals.
• Examined BOLD signal complexity across various time scales.

Main Results:

• Schizophrenia patients displayed two distinct patterns of decreased BOLD signal complexity.
• Reduced complexity toward regularity observed in cerebellum and frontal/temporal regions.
• Reduced complexity toward randomness found in frontal, occipital, postcentral cortices, insula, and cingulum.
• Regularity changes correlated with positive symptoms; randomness changes correlated with negative symptoms.

Conclusions:

• Resting-state brain dynamics in schizophrenia follow two pathological routes: regularity or randomness.
• These distinct complexity changes contribute to varied psychosis symptom domains.
• MSE analysis provides insights into schizophrenia's heterogeneous neurobiology.