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The following is a summary of “Abnormalities in cognitive-related functional connectivity can be used to identify patients with schizophrenia and individuals in clinical high-risk,” published in the March 2025 issue of BMC Psychiatry by Ou et al. 

Clinical high-risk (CHR) precedes schizophrenia, with mild cognitive, brain, and eye movement abnormalities. These alterations may increase the risk of disease progression. 

Researchers conducted a retrospective study on cognitive-related functional connectivity (FC) and eye movement abnormalities to assess schizophrenia progression.  

They recruited 30 drug-naive first-episode schizophrenia (FSZ), 28 CHR, and 30 healthy controls (HCs) for resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). They used connectome-based predictive modeling (CPM) to extract cognitive-related brain regions as FC network seeds. Support vector machine (SVM) distinguished FSZ from CHR. Smooth pursuit eye-tracking assessed eye movement features. 

The results showed FSZ had decreased cognitive-related FC between the right posterior cingulate cortex and right superior frontal gyrus vs. HCs and between the right amygdala and left inferior parietal gyrus (IPG) vs. CHR. SVM analysis showed BACS-SC, CFT-A scores, and FC between the right amygdala and left IPG could distinguish FSZ from CHR with high sensitivity. FSZ also had more eye movement abnormalities vs. HCs, linked to cognitive-related FC changes. 

Investigators exhibited different cognitive-related FC and eye movement patterns. Findings suggested potential neuroimaging and cognitive markers for early psychosis identification and intervention in high-risk groups. 

Source: bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-025-06747-x