Frequency specific resting state functional abnormalities in psychosis

Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of psychosis have focused primarily on the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations in the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal ranging from .01 to 0.1 Hz. Few studies, however, have investigated the amplitude of frequency fluctuations within discrete frequency bands and higher than 0.1 Hz in patients with psychosis at different illness stages. We investigated BOLD signal within three frequency ranges including slow-4 (.027-.073 Hz), slow-3 (.074-0.198 Hz) and slow-2 (0.199-0.25 Hz) in 89 patients with either first-episode or chronic psychosis and 119 healthy volunteers. We investigated the amplitude of frequency fluctuations within three frequency bands using 47 regions-of-interest placed within 14 known resting state networks derived using group independent component analysis. There were significant group x frequency interactions for the visual and motor cortex networks, with the largest significant group differences (patients < healthy volunteers) evident in slow-4 and slow-3, respectively. Also, healthy volunteers had an overall higher amplitude of frequency fluctuations compared to patients across the three frequency ranges in the visual cortex, dorsal attention and motor cortex networks with the opposite effect (patients > healthy volunteers) evident within the salience and frontal gyrus networks. Subsequent analyses indicated that these effects were evident in both first-episode and chronic patients. Our study provides new data regarding the importance of BOLD signal fluctuations within different frequency bands in the neurobiology of psychosis.