Effective Connectivity and Dopaminergic Function of Fronto-Striato-Thalamic Circuitry in First-Episode Psychosis, Established Schizophrenia, and Healthy Controls

Abstract

Dysfunction of fronto-striato-thalamic (FST) circuits is thought to contribute to dopaminergic dysfunction and symptom onset in psychosis, but it remains unclear whether this dysfunction is driven by aberrant bottom-up subcortical signaling or impaired top-down cortical regulation. Here, we used spectral dynamic causal modelling (DCM) of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to characterize the effective connectivity of dorsal and ventral FST circuits in a sample of 46 antipsychotic-naïve first-episode psychosis (FEP) patients and 23 controls and an independent sample of 36 patients with established schizophrenia (SCZ) patients and 100 controls. We found that midbrain an..