Auditory and Visual Thalamocortical Connectivity Alterations in Unmedicated People with Schizophrenia: An Individualized Sensory Thalamic Localization and Resting-State Functional Connectivity Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: 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. Methods: 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. Results: 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. Conclusion: 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.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".