Disrupted pathways from limbic areas to thalamus in schizophrenia highlighted by whole-brain resting-state effective connectivity analysis

摘要

Background: Numerous neuroimaging studies have revealed that schizophrenia was characterized by widespread dysconnection among brain regions during rest measured by functional connectivity (FC). In contrast with FC, effective connectivity (EC) provides information about directionality of brain connections and is thus valuable in mechanistic investigation of schizophrenic brain. However, a systematic characterization of whole-brain resting-state EC (rsEC) and how it captures different information compared with resting-state FC (rsFC) in schizophrenia are still lacking.