fMRI analysis of schizophrenic patients with aggressive behavior

It has been repeatedly demonstrated that schizophrenia has a small but significant association with violence or aggression. Attempt was made in this work to explore a potential quantitative index for classification of schizophrenic patients with and without aggressive behavior (MSA and MSNA), by analyzing the resting state fMRI data of 13*2 samples with regional homogeneity approach (ReHo). Statistically meaningful differences were found between MS A and MSNA group in eleven brain sub-areas, including left supramarginal gyrus, left parietal lobule, right superior temporal gyrus and left cerebellum anterior lob etc. Receptive operation characteristic analysis of the mean smReho map of those brain areas demonstrates further that the mean smReho value of the left cerebellum anterior lob has highest sensitivity and specificity for classification of MSNA and MSA, with a critical value of 1.175. In our future work, fMRI data acquired by different machines will be used to test this critical value.