Hippocampal connectivity in youth with schizophrenia: comparision with patients with NMDA receptor encephalitis and healthy volunteers

Abstract

The N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) hypofunction model of schizophrenia suggests that dysfunction of these receptors could underlie the brain functional abnormalities characterising these patients. In NMDAR encephalitis (NMDARE), which holds clinical similarities with schizophrenia, autoantibodies target NMDARs, predominantly located in the hippocampal region, leading to disrupted glutamatergic transmission. One study so far has described abnormal connectivity between the medial temporal lobe and posterior default mode network regions in patients with NMDARE (Peer et al., 2017), however no study so far has examined brain functional correlates of schizophrenia and NMDARE comparatively.