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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Schizophrenia
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1576215
This article is part of the Research Topic Violence and Mental Health. Focus on Schizophrenia Spectrum and Psychotic Disorders View all 6 articles
Cognitive impairment and cortical thickness abnormalities in firstepisode drug-naive schizophrenia patients with agitation
Provisionally accepted- Department of Psychiatry, Affiliated Nanjing Brain Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China
Objective: This study aims to explore the relationships between the agitation behavior, cognitive function and cortical thickness in first-episode drug-naïve schizophrenia (FESN).Methods: A total of 55 male healthy controls (HC) and 79 male inpatients with FESN were enrolled in the present study. Whole brain cortical thickness was extracted from T1-weighted MRI using Freesurfer Version 7.4.1 software package. Cognitive function was evaluated using the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB). The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale-Excited Component (PANSS-EC) is used to divide these inpatients into agitation group (FESN+A) and nonagitation group (FESN+NA). Correlation analysis was employed to investigate the potential associations between cortical thickness and cognitive function.The FESN+A group had higher Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) total score, positive symptom score, and general psychopathology score than the FESN+NA group. Both the FESN+A/NA groups showed significantly worse performance than the HC in symbol coding, working memory, attention/vigilance, reasoning and problem solving, and social cognition. The FESN+A group performed worse on working memory when comparing to FESN+NA group. Furthermore, the cortical thickness of the left paracalcarine gyrus was increased in the FESN+NA group, compared to HC. FESN+A group had thicker cortical thickness in the right posterior cingulate cortex (rPCC) compared with the FESN+NA group. The cortical thickness of rPCC was negatively correlated with score of working memory in the FESN+A group.The present study demonstrated that the abnormal cortical thickness of rPCC may be related to the agitation behavior and cognitive function in patients with FESN+A, suggesting a potential treatment target for agitation behavior and cognitive impairment in schizophrenia.
Keywords: agitation, Cognitive Function, cortical thickness, Schizophrenia, MRI
Received: 13 Feb 2025; Accepted: 28 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liang, Li, Zhou, Zhang, Lu, Shen, Jiang and Xie. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Fuli Jiang, Department of Psychiatry, Affiliated Nanjing Brain Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China
Shiping Xie, Department of Psychiatry, Affiliated Nanjing Brain Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China
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