Abnormal effective connectivity of reward network in first-episode schizophrenia with auditory verbal hallucinations

Our study employs the dynamic causal modeling (DCM) approach to perform effective connectivity (EC) analysis of the reward network to investigate the mechanisms underlying schizophrenia patients with auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs). This study enrolled 86 first-episode drug-naïve schizophrenia patients with AVHs (AVH), 93 patients without AVHs (NAVH), and 88 normal controls (NC), undergoing resting-state functional magnetic resonance. Our findings suggest that there are some common and different EC abnormalities in the reward network of AVH and NAVH. Particularly, the abnormalities of mesolimbic and mesocortex pathways in AVH may provide guidance for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of AVHs and treatment.