The next chapter of our fruitful collaboration with the amazing Katy Thakkar has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Neuroscience. Katy’s talented student Beier Yao took the lead on this one.

What this is about? People with schizophrenia sometimes experience abnormalities in a sense of agency, which may stem from abnormal sensory predictions about their own actions. Consistent with this notion, the current study found reduced structural connectivity in patients with schizophrenia in a specific brain pathway found to transmit such sensorimotor prediction signals in nonhuman primates. Reduced structural connectivity was correlated with behavioral evidence for impaired sensorimotor predictions and psychotic symptoms.

Yao, B., Neggers, S.F.W., Rolfs, M., Rösler, L., Thompson, I., Hopman, H., Ghermezi, L., Kahn, R.S., & Thakkar, K.N. (in press). Structural thalamo-frontal hypoconnectivity is related to oculomotor corollary discharge dysfunction in schizophrenia. Journal of Neuroscience. [link]