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. 2022 Apr 28;35(2):e100712.
doi: 10.1136/gpsych-2021-100712. eCollection 2022.

Abnormal neural oscillations in clinical high risk for psychosis: a magnetoencephalography method study

Yegang Hu  1 , Jun Wu  1 , YuJiao Cao  1 , XiaoChen Tang  1 , GuiSen Wu  1 , Qian Guo  1 , LiHua Xu  1 , ZhenYing Qian  1 , YanYan Wei  1 , YingYing Tang  1 , ChunBo Li  1 , Tianhong Zhang  1 , Jijun Wang  1
Affiliations

Abnormal neural oscillations in clinical high risk for psychosis: a magnetoencephalography method study

Yegang Hu et al. Gen Psychiatr. .

Abstract

Background: Neural oscillations directly reflect the rhythmic changes of brain activities during the resting state or while performing specific tasks. Abnormal neural oscillations have been discovered in patients with schizophrenia. However, there is limited evidence available on abnormal spontaneous neural oscillations in clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR-P). The brain signals recorded by the magnetoencephalography (MEG) technique are not to be disrupted by the skull and scalp.

Methods: In this study, we applied the MEG technique to record the resting-state neural activities in CHR-P. This was followed by a detailed MEG analysis method including three steps: (1) preprocessing, which was band-pass filtering based on the 0.5-60 Hz frequency range, removal of 50 Hz power frequency interference, and removal of electrocardiography (ECG) and electrooculography (EOG) artefacts by independent component analysis; (2) time-frequency analysis, a multitaper time-frequency transformation based on the Hanning window, and (3) source localisation, an exact low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography. The method was verified by comparing a participant with CHR-P with a healthy control during the MEG recordings with an eyes-closed resting state.

Results: Experimental results show that the neural oscillations in CHR-P were significantly abnormal in the theta frequency band (4-7 Hz) and the delta frequency band (1-3 Hz). Also, relevant brain regions were located in the left occipital lobe and left temporo-occipital junction for the theta band and in the right dorsolateral prefrontal lobe and near orbitofrontal gyrus for the delta band.

Conclusions: Abnormal neural oscillations based on specific frequency bands and corresponding brain sources may become biomarkers for high-risk groups. Further work will validate these characteristics in CHR-P cohorts.

Keywords: Psychiatry; Schizophrenia.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. The flowchart of MEG data analysis, where source localisation consists of four parts: head model construction, forward solution, inverse solution and source display. eLORETA, exact low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography; MEG, magnetoencephalography.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Comparison of time-frequency analysis results in (A) clinical high-risk for psychosis (CHR) versus (B) healthy control (HC).
Figure 3
Figure 3. Source localisation results on theta-band (4–7 Hz) oscillation, including (A) left occipital lobe (near cuneus lobe) and (B) left temporo-occipital junction. The results of source 1 and source 2 are from the clinical high-risk for psychosis.
Figure 4
Figure 4. Source localisation results on delta-band (1–3 Hz) oscillation, including (A) right dorsolateral prefrontal lobe and (B) near the right orbitofrontal gyrus. The results of source 1 and source 2 are from the clinical high-risk for psychosis.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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