Brainwide Anatomical Connectivity and Prediction of Longitudinal Outcomes in Antipsychotic-Naïve First-Episode Psychosis

Abstract

Background: Disruptions of axonal connectivity are thought to be a core pathophysiological feature of psychotic illness, but whether they are present early in the illness, prior to antipsychotic exposure, and whether they can predict clinical outcome remain unknown. Methods: We acquired diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance images to map structural connectivity between each pair of 319 parcellated brain regions in 61 antipsychotic-naïve individuals with first-episode psychosis (15–25 years, 46% female) and a demographically matched sample of 27 control participants. Clinical follow-up data were also acquired in patients 3 and 12 months after the scan. We used connectome-wide analyses to map ..