Altered Thalamic Connectivity in Schizophrenia

Ali-Mohammad Golestani¹, Dolores Malaspina², Laura Miles¹, Mariana Lazar¹

Previous research has reported alterations in the size, function, and connectivity of thalamus in schizophrenia. Most of the studies considered the thalamus as a homogenous region. Here, we used Resting-State fMRI connectivity to parcellate the thalamus into functionally distinct sub-regions. The connectivity maps of the identified sub-regions were compared between patients and controls . Thalamus was divided into two regions, dorsal and ventral, in both groups. In the control group, the dorsal region was negatively correlated to the cortical areas, whereas the ventral region was positively connected to them. Connectivity of both sub-regions appeared to be limited in patients. These differences in the thalamo-cortical connectivity were not detected when employing the whole thalamus as a seed.