Patients with schizophrenia exhibit disrupted thalamocortical connections that relate to aspects of symptoms and deficits in cognition. Targeted cognitive training (TCT) of the auditory system in schizophrenia has been shown to improve cognition, but its impact on thalamocortical connectivity is not known. Here we examined thalamocortical connections that may be neuroplastic in response to TCT using a region of interest (ROI) approach. Participants were randomly assigned to either 40 h of TCT (N = 24) or an active control condition (CG; N = 20). Participants underwent resting state fMRI and cognitive testing both before and after training. Changes in thalamocortical connectivity were measured in 15 ROIs derived from a previous study comparing a large sample of schizophrenia subjects with healthy controls. A significant group by time interaction was observed in a left superior temporal ROI which was previously found to exhibit thalamocortical hyper-connectivity in patients with schizophrenia. Changes in this ROI reflected thalamic connectivity increases in the TCT group, while the CG group showed decreases. Additionally, the relationship between connectivity change and change in global cognition showed a slope difference between groups, with increases in thalamo-temporal connectivity correlating with improvements in global cognition in TCT. No significant relationships were observed with changes in clinical symptoms or functioning. These findings demonstrate that TCT may influence intrinsic functional connections in young individuals with schizophrenia, such that improvements in cognition correspond to compensatory increases in connectivity in a temporal region previously shown to exhibit thalamic hyper-connectivity.

中文翻译：

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增加的全球认知与增加的丘脑 - 时间连通性相关，以响应最近发作的精神分裂症的有针对性的认知训练

精神分裂症患者表现出与症状和认知缺陷相关的丘脑皮质连接中断。精神分裂症听觉系统的定向认知训练 (TCT) 已被证明可以改善认知，但其对丘脑皮质连接的影响尚不清楚。在这里，我们使用感兴趣区域 (ROI) 方法检查了可能是响应 TCT 的神经可塑性的丘脑皮质连接。参与者被随机分配到 40 小时的 TCT（N = 24）或主动控制条件（CG；N = 20）。参与者在训练前后都接受了静息状态 fMRI 和认知测试。在 15 个 ROI 中测量了丘脑皮质连接的变化，该 ROI 来自先前的一项研究，该研究将大量精神分裂症受试者与健康对照进行了比较。在左上颞 ROI 中观察到一个显着的时间组交互作用，以前发现该 ROI 在精神分裂症患者中表现出丘脑皮质超连通性。此 ROI 的变化反映了 TCT 组中丘脑连接的增加，而 CG 组显示出减少。此外，连通性变化与全局认知变化之间的关系显示出组之间的斜率差异，丘脑-时间连通性的增加与 TCT 中全局认知的改善相关。未观察到与临床症状或功能变化的显着关系。这些发现表明，TCT 可能会影响精神分裂症青年人的内在功能联系，