Recent advances in neuroimaging biomarkers of schizophrenia

Abstract

Neuroimaging has shown much promise as potential biomarker for the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment monitoring of schizophrenia. Studies have demonstrated that schizophrenia is associated with widespread alteration in the brain's gray matter and white matter structure, and disruption in the brain's connectivities and activities. More recent advances in neuroimaging data collection and analysis methods have allowed for the examination of these disruptions in a coordinated, global fashion. Analyses of large-scale networks using multivariate and multimodal approaches are providing evidence that schizophrenia is a disorder of neural and cognitive integration with subtle, multifocal abnormalities involving local changes of global brain network architecture. Notwithstanding current advances, critical questions remain unsettled regarding the utility of neuroimaging for individualized diagnosis and monitoring, clarifying disease mechanism with treatment and comorbidity, and characterizing psychosis spectra in general.