Reduced mediodorsal thalamic volume and prefrontal cortical spindle activity in schizophrenia

•We measured thalamic VOIs and cortical sources of sleep spindles in schizophrenia.•MD thalamus VOIs were reduced in schizophrenia patients compared to healthy controls.•MD volumes correlated with EEG frontal spindles, which originated in cortical BA 10.•BA 10 prefrontal spindle currents predicted performance in an abstraction/WM task.•We found thalamo-cortical deficits related to cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia.

BackgroundWe recently found marked deficits in sleep spindles, non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep oscillations that are generated within the thalamus and then amplified and sustained in the cortex, in patients with schizophrenia compared to both healthy and psychiatric controls. Here, we investigated the thalamic and cortical contributions to these sleep spindle deficits.MethodsAnatomical volume of interest analysis (i.e., thalamic volumes) and electroencephalogram (EEG) source modeling (i.e., spindle-related cortical currents) were performed in patients with schizophrenia and healthy comparison subjects.FindingsSchizophrenia patients had reduced mediodorsal (MD) thalamic volumes, especially on the left side, compared to healthy controls, whereas whole thalami and lateral geniculate nuclei did not differ between groups. Furthermore, left MD volumes were strongly correlated with the number of scalp-recorded spindles in an anterior frontal region, and cortical currents underlying these anterior frontal spindles were localized in the prefrontal cortex, in Brodmann area (BA) 10. Finally, prefrontal currents at the peak of spindle activity were significantly reduced in schizophrenia patients and correlated with their performance in an abstraction/working memory task.ConclusionAltogether, these findings point to deficits in a specific thalamo-cortical circuitry in schizophrenia, which is associated with some cognitive deficits commonly reported in those patients.