Abstract
The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is a heterogeneous region of the brain’s limbic system that regulates cognitive and emotional processing, and is frequently implicated in schizophrenia. This study aims to characterize resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) profiles of three subregions of ACC in patients with first-episode schizophrenia and healthy controls. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) scans were collected from 60 first-episode schizophrenia (FES) patients and 60 healthy controls (HC), and the subgenual ACC (sgACC), pregenual ACC (pgACC), and dorsal ACC (dACC) were selected as seed regions from the newest automated anatomical labeling atlas 3 (AAL3). Seed-based rsFC maps for each ACC subregion were generated and compared between the two groups. The results revealed that compared to the HC group, the FES group showed higher rsFC between the pgACC and bilateral lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC), and lower rsFC between the dACC and right posterior OFC (pOFC), the medial prefrontal gyrus (MPFC), and the precuneus cortex (PCu). These findings point to a selective functional dysconnectivity of pgACC and dACC in schizophrenia and provide more accurate information about the functional role of the ACC in this disorder.
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The work is supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2042020kf0128), Health Commission of Hubei Province scientific research project (WJ2021M142), and the Medical Science Advancement Program of Wuhan University (TFLC2018001).
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WHL and ZY designed the study. HH, CC, RB, WY, and YLP conducted subjects’ recruitment and performed the study. HH undertook the imaging data analysis and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. WHL, LZC, WGH, and ZY revised the manuscript. All authors provided their final approval of the version to be published.
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The Ethics Committee of Wuhan University’s Renmin Hospital approved the study protocol(2014 K-025).
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Huang, H., Chen, C., Rong, B. et al. Distinct resting-state functional connectivity of the anterior cingulate cortex subregions in first-episode schizophrenia. Brain Imaging and Behavior (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-024-00863-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-024-00863-0