Neural Disconnection & Errant Visual Perception in Psychotic Psychopathology

Study Overview

Distorted perception is a defining feature of severe mental disorders and contributes to the impaired reality testing of people with psychosis. Growing evidence indicates that individuals with psychotic disorders have compromised connections in the brain which may account for perceptual distortions and hallucinations. The Psychosis Human Connectome Project (P-HCP) will collect data on people with psychosis (PwP), their first-degree biological relatives, and healthy controls in order to examine possible endophenotypic markers of psychosis. The goal of this project is to use state-of-the-art brain imaging from the Human Connectome Project (HCP) in concert with sophisticated visual tasks to develop and test neurophysiological models of basic and complex visual functions of the brain in order to understand the origins of distorted perception in psychosis.  

Study Timespan: Aug. 5, 2016 - July 31, 2020

Investigators

Scott Sponheim

Scott Sponheim, Ph.D. - UMinn Principal Investigator

Contact: Email

Study Protocol Overview

Data being collected 

  • Standard HCP demographics
  • Imaging:  
    • 3T: Data will be collected on a Siemens 3T Prisma scanner using the Siemens 32 channel head coil. We are collecting structural (T1, T2, & DTI) and functional (resting state & task) data. 
    • 7T: Data will be collected on a Siemens 7T scanner using the NOVA 1x32 (single channel transmit 32 channel receive) coil. We will collect structural (T1), functional (visual task and motor task), and magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) data. 
    • A subset of individuals will be invited back for a second 7T follow-up session 
  • Clinical:  Diagnostic information will be collected using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV-TR (SCID). Symptom ratings will be collected using the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale – 24 Item Version and Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) and Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS)  Additional clinical phenotypes are assessed through questionnaires, Specimens for genetic analyses will be acquired. 
  • Behavioral: NIH Toolbox measures, Degraded Stimulus-Continuous Performance Task (DS-CPT), and cognitive and motor function assessments. 


Cohort Description 

A total of 300 participants ranging in age from 18-59 will be enrolled in the study; enrollment will consist of 50 healthy controls, 150 people with psychosis, 100 first-degree biological relatives of people who experience psychosis.  


Data Release Plans 

  • The first data release includes 100 participants
  • The second data release includes 200 participants
  • The third data release includes 300 participants 


Keywords

Psychosis, schizophrenia, genome, family studies, visual perception. 

Publications

  • The effect of attention and dot coherence on fMRI responses to 3D structure-from-motion

    Cheng Qiu; Daniel Kersten; Cheryl A. Olman
    Journal of Vision, Aug 01, 2014
  • Abnormal contextual modulation of visual contour detection in patients with schizophrenia.

    Michael-Paul Schallmo, Scott R Sponheim, Cheryl A Olman
    PloS one, Aug 08, 2013 PMID: 23922637
    Show Summary

    Schizophrenia patients demonstrate perceptual deficits consistent with broad dysfunction in visual context processing. These include poor integration of segments forming visual contours, and reduced visual contrast effects (e.g. weaker orientation-dependent surround suppression, ODSS). Background image context can influence contour perception, as stimuli near the contour affect detection accuracy. Because of ODSS, this contextual modulation depends on the relative orientation between the contour and flanking elements, with parallel flankers impairing contour perception. However in schizophrenia, the impact of abnormal ODSS during contour perception is not clear. It is also unknown whether deficient contour perception marks genetic liability for schizophrenia, or is strictly associated with clinical expression of this disorder. We examined contour detection in 25 adults with schizophrenia, 13 unaffected first-degree biological relatives of schizophrenia patients, and 28 healthy controls. Subjects performed a psychophysics experiment designed to quantify the effect of flanker orientation during contour detection. Overall, patients with schizophrenia showed poorer contour detection performance than relatives or controls. Parallel flankers suppressed and orthogonal flankers enhanced contour detection performance for all groups, but parallel suppression was relatively weaker for schizophrenia patients than healthy controls. Relatives of patients showed equivalent performance with controls. Computational modeling suggested that abnormal contextual modulation in schizophrenia may be explained by suppression that is more broadly tuned for orientation. Abnormal flanker suppression in schizophrenia is consistent with weaker ODSS and/or broader orientation tuning. This work provides the first evidence that such perceptual abnormalities may not be associated with a genetic liability for schizophrenia.

  • Pushing spatial and temporal resolution for functional and diffusion MRI in the Human Connectome Project.

    Kamil Uğurbil, Junqian Xu, Edward J Auerbach, Steen Moeller, An T Vu, Julio M Duarte-Carvajalino, Christophe Lenglet, Xiaoping Wu, Sebastian Schmitter, Pierre Francois Van de Moortele, John Strupp, Guillermo Sapiro, Federico De Martino, Dingxin Wang, Noam Harel, Michael Garwood, Liyong Chen, David A Feinberg, Stephen M Smith, Karla L Miller, Stamatios N Sotiropoulos, Saad Jbabdi, Jesper L R Andersson, Timothy E J Behrens, Matthew F Glasser, David C Van Essen, Essa Yacoub, WU-Minn HCP Consortium
    NeuroImage, May 25, 2013 PMID: 23702417
    Show Summary

    The Human Connectome Project (HCP) relies primarily on three complementary magnetic resonance (MR) methods. These are: 1) resting state functional MR imaging (rfMRI) which uses correlations in the temporal fluctuations in an fMRI time series to deduce 'functional connectivity'; 2) diffusion imaging (dMRI), which provides the input for tractography algorithms used for the reconstruction of the complex axonal fiber architecture; and 3) task based fMRI (tfMRI), which is employed to identify functional parcellation in the human brain in order to assist analyses of data obtained with the first two methods. We describe technical improvements and optimization of these methods as well as instrumental choices that impact speed of acquisition of fMRI and dMRI images at 3T, leading to whole brain coverage with 2 mm isotropic resolution in 0.7 s for fMRI, and 1.25 mm isotropic resolution dMRI data for tractography analysis with three-fold reduction in total dMRI data acquisition time. Ongoing technical developments and optimization for acquisition of similar data at 7 T magnetic field are also presented, targeting higher spatial resolution, enhanced specificity of functional imaging signals, mitigation of the inhomogeneous radio frequency (RF) fields, and reduced power deposition. Results demonstrate that overall, these approaches represent a significant advance in MR imaging of the human brain to investigate brain function and structure.

  • Fragile early visual percepts mark genetic liability specific to schizophrenia.

    Scott R Sponheim, Sarah M Sass, Althea L Noukki, Bridget M Hegeman
    Schizophrenia bulletin, Mar 27, 2012 PMID: 22446567
    Show Summary

    Disruption of visual percepts by a subsequent stimulus (ie, backward masking) has been consistently noted in schizophrenia, with some evidence that this fragility in early perception is present in people with genetic liability for the disorder. Given the potential of backward masking paradigms to mark neural processes that confer risk for schizophrenia, it is important to test the diagnostic specificity of abnormalities in visual perception. To more fully assess whether masking visual stimuli reveals a marker of genetic liability (ie, endophenotype) specific to schizophrenia, we tested 44 people with the disorder, 29 people with bipolar disorder, 56 first-degree biological relatives of people with schizophrenia, 26 first-degree biological relatives of people with bipolar disorder, and 43 nonpsychiatric control participants using a magnocellular-biased visual backward masking procedure that included target-to-mask onset asynchronies ranging from 0 to 80 ms. Relatives of people with schizophrenia who were without schizophrenia spectrum disorders exhibited impaired performance compared with nonpsychiatric control participants and relatives of people with bipolar disorder when a visual mask interrupted early perception (eg, 27 ms). A similar vulnerability of early processes was noted in people with schizophrenia, yet they also had impaired performance when masks occurred at later time points (ie, 80 ms). Performance deficits were not attributable to intellectual function, measures of attention and memory, symptomatology, or medication dosage. Bipolar patients and their relatives failed to exhibit deficits on the backward masking task. Fragility of early visual percepts appears to mark genetic liability specific to schizophrenia and may serve as an endophenotype for the disorder.

  • Layer-specific fMRI reflects different neuronal computations at different depths in human V1.

    Cheryl A Olman, Noam Harel, David A Feinberg, Sheng He, Peng Zhang, Kamil Ugurbil, Essa Yacoub
    PloS one, Mar 27, 2012 PMID: 22448223
    Show Summary

    Recent work has established that cerebral blood flow is regulated at a spatial scale that can be resolved by high field fMRI to show cortical columns in humans. While cortical columns represent a cluster of neurons with similar response properties (spanning from the pial surface to the white matter), important information regarding neuronal interactions and computational processes is also contained within a single column, distributed across the six cortical lamina. A basic understanding of underlying neuronal circuitry or computations may be revealed through investigations of the distribution of neural responses at different cortical depths. In this study, we used T(2)-weighted imaging with 0.7 mm (isotropic) resolution to measure fMRI responses at different depths in the gray matter while human subjects observed images with either recognizable or scrambled (physically impossible) objects. Intact and scrambled images were partially occluded, resulting in clusters of activity distributed across primary visual cortex. A subset of the identified clusters of voxels showed a preference for scrambled objects over intact; in these clusters, the fMRI response in middle layers was stronger during the presentation of scrambled objects than during the presentation of intact objects. A second experiment, using stimuli targeted at either the magnocellular or the parvocellular visual pathway, shows that laminar profiles in response to parvocellular-targeted stimuli peak in more superficial layers. These findings provide new evidence for the differential sensitivity of high-field fMRI to modulations of the neural responses at different cortical depths.

  • Contrast Response Functions for Single Gabor Patches: ROI-Based Analysis Over-Represents Low-Contrast Patches for GE BOLD.

    Jennifer F Schumacher, Serena K Thompson, Cheryl A Olman
    Show Summary

    IMPORTANT FOR THE INTERPRETATION OF BOLD FMRI DATA IS A LINEAR RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE BOLD RESPONSE AND THE UNDERLYING NEURAL ACTIVITY: increased BOLD responses should reflect proportionate increases in the underlying neural activity. While previous studies have demonstrated a linear relationship between the peak amplitude of the BOLD response and neural activity in primary visual cortex (V1), these studies have used stimuli that excite large areas of cortex, and the linearity of the BOLD response has not been demonstrated when only a small patch of cortex is stimulated. The BOLD response to isolated Gabor patches of increasing contrast was measured with gradient echo (GE) BOLD and spin echo (SE) BOLD at 7 T. Our primary finding is notable spatial heterogeneity of the BOLD contrast response, particularly for the GE BOLD data, resulting in a more reliably linear relationship between BOLD data and estimated neural responses in the center of the cortical representations of the individual Gabor patches than near the edges. A control experiment with larger sinusoidal grating patches confirms that the observed sensitivity to voxel selection in the regions of interest-based analysis is unique to the small stimuli.

  • Retinotopic mapping with spin echo BOLD at 7T.

    Cheryl A Olman, Pierre-Francois Van de Moortele, Jennifer F Schumacher, Joseph R Guy, Kâmil Uğurbil, Essa Yacoub
    Magnetic resonance imaging, Jul 27, 2010 PMID: 20656431
    Show Summary

    For blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) functional MRI experiments, contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) increases with increasing field strength for both gradient echo (GE) and spin echo (SE) BOLD techniques. However, susceptibility artifacts and nonuniform coil sensitivity profiles complicate large field-of-view fMRI experiments (e.g., experiments covering multiple visual areas instead of focusing on a single cortical region). Here, we use SE BOLD to acquire retinotopic mapping data in early visual areas, testing the feasibility of SE BOLD experiments spanning multiple cortical areas at 7T. We also use a recently developed method for normalizing signal intensity in T(1)-weighted anatomical images to enable automated segmentation of the cortical gray matter for scans acquired at 7T with either surface or volume coils. We find that the CNR of the 7T GE data (average single-voxel, single-scan stimulus coherence: 0.41) is almost twice that of the 3T GE BOLD data (average coherence: 0.25), with the CNR of the SE BOLD data (average coherence: 0.23) comparable to that of the 3T GE data. Repeated measurements in individual subjects find that maps acquired with 1.8-mm resolution at 3T and 7T with GE BOLD and at 7T with SE BOLD show no systematic differences in either the area or the boundary locations for V1, V2 and V3, demonstrating the feasibility of high-resolution SE BOLD experiments with good sensitivity throughout multiple visual areas.

  • Altered functional and anatomical connectivity in schizophrenia.

    Jazmin Camchong, Angus W MacDonald, Christopher Bell, Bryon A Mueller, Kelvin O Lim
    Schizophrenia bulletin, Nov 19, 2009 PMID: 19920062
    Show Summary

    Schizophrenia is characterized by a lack of integration between thought, emotion, and behavior. A disruption in the connectivity between brain processes may underlie this schism. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) were used to evaluate functional and anatomical brain connectivity in schizophrenia.

  • Frontal white matter integrity as an endophenotype for schizophrenia: diffusion tensor imaging in monozygotic twins and patients' nonpsychotic relatives.

    Jazmin Camchong, Kelvin O Lim, Scott R Sponheim, Angus W Macdonald
    Show Summary

    Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) provides anatomical connectivity information by examining the directional organization of white matter microstructure. Anatomical connectivity and its abnormalities may be heritable traits associated with schizophrenia. To further examine this hypothesis, two studies were conducted to compare anatomical connectivity between (a) monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs and random pairings among twins and (b) first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients and a healthy control group. Analyses focused on frontal regions of the brain following previous findings of anatomical connectivity abnormalities associated with schizophrenia. For Study 1, eighteen MZ twin pairs (11 female pairs, age: M = 25.44, SD = 5.69) were recruited. For Study 2, twenty-two first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients (14 females, age: M = 48.50, SD = 8.22), and 30 healthy controls (12 females, age: M = 43.83, SD = 11.39) were recruited. Fractional anisotropy (FA), a white matter directional organization metric, was measured with DTI. In Study 1, FA values were more strongly correlated between MZ twin pairs than between randomly generated pairs in genu of corpus callosum, anterior cingulum and forceps minor. In Study 2, relatives of schizophrenia patients showed reduced FA values in medial frontal white matter (p < 0.05, corrected). The present study suggested that anatomical connectivity in medial prefrontal cortex appeared significantly heritable within MZ twin pairs, an important criterion in the development of an endophenotype. In addition, altered medial frontal white matter integrity found in non-affected relatives of schizophrenia patients seems to suggest that reduced white matter integrity in medial frontal regions of the brain might be associated with the genetic liability to schizophrenia.

  • Neural anomalies during sustained attention in first-degree biological relatives of schizophrenia patients.

    Scott R Sponheim, Kathryn A McGuire, John J Stanwyck
    Biological psychiatry, Feb 08, 2006 PMID: 16460700
    Show Summary

    A deficit in sustained attention might serve as an endophenotype for schizophrenia and therefore be a useful tool in understanding the genetic underpinnings of the disorder. We sought to detail functional brain abnormalities associated with sustained attention (i.e., vigilance) in individuals with genetic liability for schizophrenia.

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