Open AccessAltered Topological Properties of Brain Networks in Social Anxiety Disorder: A Resting-state Functional MRI Study
Author(s) -
Hongru Zhu,
Changjian Qiu,
Yajing Meng,
Minlan Yuan,
Yan Zhang,
Zhengjia Ren,
Yuchen Li,
Xiaoqi Huang,
Qiyong Gong,
Su Lui,
Wei Zhang
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
scientific reports
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.24
H-Index - 213
ISSN - 2045-2322
DOI - 10.1038/srep43089
Subject(s) - resting state fmri , functional connectivity , social anxiety , anxiety , neuroscience , psychology , medicine , psychiatry , clinical psychology , computer science
Recent studies involving connectome analysis including graph theory have yielded potential biomarkers for mental disorders. In this study, we aimed to investigate the differences of resting-state network between patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD) and healthy controls (HCs), as well as to distinguish between individual subjects using topological properties. In total, 42 SAD patients and the same number of HCs underwent resting functional MRI, and the topological organization of the whole-brain functional network was calculated using graph theory. Compared with the controls, the patients showed a decrease in 49 positive connections. In the topological analysis, the patients showed an increase in the area under the curve (AUC) of the global shortest path length of the network ( L p ) and a decrease in the AUC of the global clustering coefficient of the network ( C p ). Furthermore, the AUCs of L p and C p were used to effectively discriminate the individual SAD patients from the HCs with high accuracy. This study revealed that the neural networks of the SAD patients showed changes in topological characteristics, and these changes were prominent not only in both groups but also at the individual level. This study provides a new perspective for the identification of patients with SAD.