Background Heterogeneity in the etiology, pathophysiology, and clinical features of schizophrenia challenges clinicians and researchers. A helpful approach could be stratifying patients according to the presence or absence of clinical features of the deficit syndrome (DS). DS is characterized by enduring and primary negative symptoms, a clinically less heterogeneous subtype of the illness, and patients with features of DS are thought to present abnormal brain network characteristics, however, this idea has received limited attention. We investigated functional brain network topology in patients displaying deficit features and those who do not. Design We applied graph theory analytics to resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data of 61 antipsychotic medication-naïve first episode psychosis patients, 18 DS and 43 non-deficit schizophrenia (NDS), and 72 healthy controls (HC). We quantified small-worldness, global and nodal efficiency measures, shortest path length, nodal local efficiency, and synchronization and contrasted them among the 3 groups. Results DS presented decreased network integration and segregation compared to HC and NDS. DS showed lower global efficiency, longer global path lengths, and lower global local efficiency. Nodal efficiency was lower and the shortest path length was longer in DS in default mode, ventral attention, dorsal attention, frontoparietal, limbic, somatomotor, and visual networks compared to HC. Compared to NDS, DS showed lower efficiency and longer shortest path length in default mode, limbic, somatomotor, and visual networks. Conclusions Our data supports increasing evidence, based on topological perturbations of the functional connectome, that deficit syndrome may be a distinct form of the illness.

中文翻译：

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功能连接组中的拓扑扰动支持未接受过抗精神病药物治疗的首发精神病患者的缺陷/非缺陷区别

背景 精神分裂症的病因、病理生理学和临床特征的异质性给临床医生和研究人员带来了挑战。一种有用的方法是根据缺陷综合征 (DS) 临床特征的存在或不存在对患者进行分层。 DS 的特点是持久的、原发性阴性症状，这是一种临床上异质性较低的疾病亚型，具有 DS 特征的患者被认为存在异常的大脑网络特征，然而，这一想法受到的关注有限。我们研究了表现出缺陷特征和没有缺陷特征的患者的功能性大脑网络拓扑。设计 我们将图论分析应用于 61 名未接受抗精神病药物治疗的首发精神病患者、18 名 DS 和 43 名非缺陷性精神分裂症 (NDS) 以及 72 名健康对照 (HC) 的静息态功能磁共振成像数据。我们量化了小世界、全局和节点效率测量、最短路径长度、节点局部效率和同步性，并在三组之间进行了对比。结果与 HC 和 NDS 相比，DS 的网络集成度和隔离度有所降低。 DS 显示出较低的全局效率、较长的全局路径长度和较低的全局局部效率。与 HC 相比，DS 在默认模式、腹侧注意力、背侧注意力、额顶叶、边缘、躯体运动和视觉网络中的节点效率较低，最短路径长度较长。与 NDS 相比，DS 在默认模式、边缘系统、躯体运动和视觉网络中表现出较低的效率和较长的最短路径长度。结论 基于功能连接组的拓扑扰动，我们的数据支持越来越多的证据，表明缺陷综合征可能是该疾病的一种独特形式。