Auditory and Visual Thalamocortical Connectivity Alterations in Unmedicated People with Schizophrenia: An...

Converging evidence from clinical neuroimaging and animal models has strongly implicated dysfunction of thalamocortical circuits in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Preclinical models of genetic risk for schizophrenia have shown reduced synaptic transmission from auditory thalamus to primary auditory cortex, which may represent a correlate of auditory disturbances such as hallucinations. Human neuroimaging studies, however, have found a generalized increase in resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) between whole thalamus and sensorimotor cortex in people with schizophrenia (PSZ). We aimed to more directly translate preclinical findings by specifically localizing auditory and visual thalamic nuclei in unmedicated PSZ and measuring RSFC to primary sensory cortices.

In this case-control study, 82 unmedicated PSZ and 55 matched healthy controls (HC) completed RSFC functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Auditory and visual thalamic nuclei were localized for 55 unmedicated PSZ and 46 HC who additionally completed a sensory thalamic nuclei localizer fMRI task (N = 101). Using localized nuclei as RSFC seeds we assessed group differences in auditory and visual thalamocortical connectivity and associations with positive symptom severity.

Auditory thalamocortical connectivity was not significantly different between PSZ and HC, but hyperconnectivity was associated with greater positive symptom severity in bilateral superior temporal gyrus. Visual thalamocortical connectivity was significantly greater in PSZ relative to HC in secondary and higher-order visual cortex, but not predictive of positive symptom severity.

These results indicate that visual thalamocortical hyperconnectivity is a generalized marker of schizophrenia, while hyperconnectivity in auditory thalamocortical circuits relates more specifically to positive symptom severity.