Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment (Jun 2018)

Structural equation modeling approach between salience network dysfunction, depressed mood, and subjective quality of life in schizophrenia: an ICA resting-state fMRI study

  • Ohta M,
  • Nakataki M,
  • Takeda T,
  • Numata S,
  • Tominaga T,
  • Kameoka N,
  • Kubo H,
  • Kinoshita M,
  • Matsuura K,
  • Otomo M,
  • Takeichi N,
  • Harada M,
  • Ohmori T

Journal volume & issue
Vol. Volume 14
pp. 1585 – 1597

Abstract

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Masashi Ohta,1 Masahito Nakataki,1 Tomoya Takeda,1 Shusuke Numata,1 Takeo Tominaga,1 Naomi Kameoka,2 Hiroko Kubo,1 Makoto Kinoshita,1 Kanae Matsuura,2 Maki Otomo,3 Naoya Takeichi,4 Masafumi Harada,3 Tetsuro Ohmori1 1Department of Psychiatry, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Tokushima University, Tokushima, Japan; 2Department of Psychiatry, Tokushima University Hospital, Tokushima, Japan; 3Department of Radiology and Radiation Oncology, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Tokushima University, Tokushima, Japan; 4Department of Radiology, Tokushima University Hospital, Tokushima, Japan Purpose: Quality of life (QOL) is an important clinical outcome for patients with schizophrenia, and recent studies have focused on subjective QOL. We evaluated the causal relationship between psychosocial aspect of subjective QOL, symptoms, cognitive functions, and salience network (SN) dysfunction in schizophrenia using structural equation modeling (SEM). Patients and methods: We performed a cross-sectional study of 21 patients with symptomatically stabilized schizophrenia and 21 age-, sex-, and education level-matched healthy controls who underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. We evaluated SN dysfunction in schizophrenia using independent component analysis (ICA). We rated participant psychopathology using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia (BACS), and the Calgary Depression Scale for Schizophrenia (CDSS). We rated psychosocial aspect of subjective QOL using the Schizophrenia Quality of Life Scale (SQLS) psychosocial subscale. We applied SEM to examine the relationships between SN dysfunction, PANSS positive and negative scores, CDSS total scores, BACS composite scores, and SQLS psychosocial subscale scores. Results: In second-level analysis after group ICA, patient group had significant lower right pallidum functional connectivity (FC) within the SN than the controls did (Montreal Neurological Institute [MNI] [x y z] = [22 -2 -6]) (p = 0.027, family-wise error [FWE] corrected). In SEM, we obtained a good fit for an SEM model in which SN dysfunction causes depressed mood, which in turn determines psychosocial aspect of subjective QOL (chi-squared p = 0.9, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) < 0.001, comparative fit index [CFI] = 1.00, and standardized root mean square residual [SRMR]= 0.020). Conclusion: We found a continuous process by which SN dysfunction causes depressed moods that determine psychosocial aspect of subjective QOL in schizophrenia. This is the first report that offers a unified explanation of functional neuroimaging, symptoms, and outcomes. Future studies combining neuroimaging techniques and clinical assessments would elucidate schizophrenia’s pathogenesis. Keywords: depressed mood, salience network, schizophrenia, structural equation modeling, subjective quality of life, resting-state fMRI

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