Phenotypic fitting of whole-brain models to explore functional connectivity dynamics correlates of hallucinations in...

The pathophysiology of schizophrenia and its associated symptoms remains poorly understood despite decades of research utilizing diverse neuroimaging techniques. Recent advancements, such as the analysis of dynamic functional connectivity in resting-state fMRI signals and the application of generative whole-brain models - computational psychiatry tool, offer novel insights into the disorder. In this exploratory study we applied a recently developed phenotypic fitting approach for whole-brain modeling to investigate functional connectivity dynamics correlates of schizophrenia symptoms. Our findings showed that higher hallucination severity was strongly correlated with functional connectivity dynamics resembling those generated by a dynamic mean field model operating with elevated excitation/inhibition balance.