Summary: Psychosis may not start with hallucinations, but with subtle motor changes such as resistance to reduced taking. A new study reveals that the lowest gripping force in people with early psychosis is linked to modified brain connectivity, especially in networks that govern both movement and cognition.
These changes affect regions such as the anterior cingular cortex, the sensorimotor cortex and the cerebellum, offering a more accessible means of detecting and understanding psychosis. The results open the door to new interventions, from brain stimulation to physical training, which can strengthen these neuronal routes and improve mental health results.
Key facts:
- Engine indices: Bad strength of adhesion in early psychosis is linked to reduced brain connectivity.
- Brain targets: Communication disturbed in the default fashion network can underpin both movement and mental symptoms.
- New interventions: Treatments such as TMS or engine drive could stimulate brain function and well-being.
Source: Indiana University
Psychosis often does not start with disturbances characteristic of the mind – delusions like paranoia or hallucinations – but with disturbances in the way we move our body.
For researchers like the deputy professor of the University of Indiana, Alexandra Moussa-Toos, in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, these motor disturbances provide critical information on the state of psychosis itself.
In a new study published on June 25 in the American Journal of PsychiatrySenior Moussa -Toos and first author Heather Burrell Ward, deputy professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, explore such a motor capacity – the strength of adhesion – to discover the mechanisms linking motor disturbances to psychosis.
As Moussa-Toos explains: “Poor adhesion force has been associated with many negative results in a variety of people: lower well-being, higher risk of mortality, daily malfunction, poor quality of life.
“The strength of adhesion seems to capture that things are not doing well. But it has not been well studied in relation to brain function or early psychosis. Our study examines how the strength of adhesion can be an important sign of brain and psychological health in early psychosis. ”
The study is the first to suggest that the strength of adhesion and global well-being share joint cerebral connectivity patterns. It shows that an impairment of the force of adhesion and well-being can reflect alterations of what researchers call “functional connectivity to the state of rest”, a measure of the function of the brain network which can be the key to understanding psychosis.
Thanks to a new neuroimaging analysis, Moussa-Toos and its collaborators demonstrate that brain networks with important roles in motor and cognitive function play a key role in the ability to grasp and mental well-being. Their results have laid the basis of interventions to improve the functioning and well-being in early psychosis.
An explanation of the unifying brain circuit
The study data came from the Human Connectome for Early Psychosis project, a large initiative carried out from 2016 to 2020 on several sites, including the IU School of Medicine. It included 89 individuals in the first five years of psychotic illness and 51 healthy checks for which the decline of the age linked to age or drugs could be excluded.
The analysis confirmed that participants with early psychosis had lower scores of handle and well-being than healthy witnesses. These measures linked to three key brain regions – the anterior cingular cortex, the sensorimotor cortex and the cerebellum – each proved to be connected to the default fashion network.
A higher grip resistance and greater well-being were correlated with greater connectivity between these regions and the default fashion network.
Identify brain targets for new treatments
“Our results are particularly exciting because they identify potential brain targets for new treatments for psychosis,” Ward said.
For example, the two researchers see enormous potential in transcranial magnetic stimulation. If in psychosis, there is poor communication in the default fashion network, TMS is a non -invasive tool that can be used to directly increase this connectivity. Engine training, such as exercise, indirectly strengthening brain networks can offer another promising strategy.
“The strength of adhesion and other motor functions,” explains Moussa-Toos, “are easily evaluated and more easily interpretable than complex tasks often used to study psychosis.
“Our work shows that these apparently simple measures can help us understand the disturbances not only in the engine system, but through complex brain systems that give rise to the complex symptoms that we see in psychosis.”
Consider the following analogy, she suggests: “If psychosis is a fire house, symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations are smoke. In a fire, you do not target smoke, you target fire and its source. And yet, currently this is not how we approach the treatment of psychosis.
“The motor disturbances help us to get closer to the identification of where the fire can have started and spread. They are more fundamental in the sense that they are easier to link to different disturbances in the brain. ”
With this new study, researchers are closer to the fire. In trace a line between motor function and mental health – from the strength of adhesion and well -being to brain connectivity models with a key role in psychosis – they map new ways to understand and treat an elusive disorder.
About this new psychosis research
Author: Liz Rosdeitcher
Source: Indiana University
Contact: Liz Rosdeitcher – University of Indiana
Picture: The image is credited with Neuroscience News
Original search: Closed access.
“”The strength of adhesion as a marker of the integrity and well-being of the network to the state of rest in early psychosis»By Alexandra Moussa-Toos et al. American Journal of Psychiatry
Abstract
The strength of adhesion as a marker of the integrity and well-being of the network to the state of rest in early psychosis
Objective:
Psychomotor function is a critical marker of the risk and results of psychosis. The strength of adhesion is an aspect of the psychomotor function which is known to be linked to integrity and structural neuronal well-being.
This study sought to determine whether the strength of adhesion is a marker of the alterations of connectivity and well-being of psychotic disorders in the state of rest in order to further clarify the mechanisms by which the phenomenology of psychosis is linked to psychomotor processes.
Methods:
The authors analyzed functional MRI and the strength of adhesion to the state of rest in 89 people with early psychosis and 51 witness subjects without psychiatric disorders of the human connection project for early psychosis. The participants were aged 16 to 35.
Using the multivariate analysis of whole connection data models, the authors have identified brain correlations of the grip force, then reproduced this analysis using the wellness measures of the NIH toolbox and the global scale of the operating scale (GAF).
Results:
The group of psychosis presented a reduction in the strength of adhesion, well-being and GAF scores compared to the control group. The resistance to grip was linked to connectivity to the state of rest in the sensorimotor cortex, the anterior cingular cortex and the cerebellum. Connectivity correlated with the default fashion network (DMN) (Rsensorimotor= 0.22, Rcingular= 0.30, Rcerebellum= 0.24).
When the analysis was repeated for the GAF and the well-being, the regions that overlap in the sensorimotor cortex and the cerebellum have been connected to the DMN and linked to the GAF (Rsensorimotor= 0.17, Rcerebellum= 0.28) and well-being (Rsensorimotor= 0.16, Rcerebellum= 0.16). Relations have been motivated by the cerebellum psychosis group and cinged nodes.
Conclusions:
The data-based analysis at the connection scale has identified the correlates of the shared brain of the strength of adhesion, global function and well-being in a sample of young adults with psychosis and healthy witness subjects.
This suggests that the strength of adhesion can be a marker of DMN connectivity, which can in turn be an important marker of global health, even in the populations of young adults.
