Altered white matter connectivity in patients with schizophrenia: An investigation using public neuroimaging data from SchizConnect

Several studies have produced extensive evidence on white matter abnormalities in schizophrenia (SZ). However, optimum consistency and reproducibility have not been achieved, and reported low white matter tract integrity in patients with SZ varies between studies. A whole-brain imaging study with a large sample size is needed. This study aimed to investigate white matter integrity in the corpus callosum and connections between regions of interests (ROIs) in the same hemisphere in 122 patients with SZ and 129 healthy controls with public neuroimaging data from SchizConnect. For each diffusion-weighted image (DWI), two-tensor full-brain tractography was performed; DWIs were parcellated by processing and registering T1 images with FreeSurfer and Advanced Normalization Tools. White matter query language was used to extract white matter fiber tracts. We evaluated group differences in means of diffusion measures between the patients and controls, and correlations of diffusion measures with the severity of clinical symptoms and cognitive impairment in the patients using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), a letter-number sequencing (LNS) test, vocabulary test, letter fluency test, category fluency test, and trail-making test, part A. To correct for multiple comparisons, a false discovery rate of q