A Multimodal Study Of The Effect Of Dance Training On Brain Plasticity In Patients With Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder.The negative symptoms and cognitive impairment are the major factors affecting the social function of schizophrenia.However,the therapeutic effects of treatment on the two domains are not ideal.A large number of studies have reported that the core network of sensorimotor may be the key to clinical symptoms and cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia.Most research has focused on the higher brain regions of schizophrenia,however,the study of the sensorimotor system is limited.It is found that dance training significantly improves the sensorimotor core brain network and further affects the higher functional network from the bottom-up way.It suggests that dance training may be a promising complementary treatment for schizophrenia,however,the underlying brain network mechanism of dance training remains unclear.Using multimode means,this study aimed to explore the effective mechanism of dance training on schizophrenia by examining clinical symptoms,cognitive functions,and brain images.This study recruited 46 schizophrenias who were randomly allocated to dance training or aerobic training group for a 3-month program consisting of 50-mins sessions three times per week.The Positive and Negative Symptom Scale(PANSS)scores,Nurses’ Observation Scale for Inpatient Evaluation(NOISE)scores,MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery test(MCCB)data,and resting-state Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging(f MRI)data were collected from each subjects.The results indicated that both dance training and aerobic training significantly improved negative symptoms and cognitive functions in schizophrenia,which might be related to the similar characteristics of training.In addition,dance training led to specific improvements.Repeated measures analysis of variance showed significant interaction effects on the Continuous Operation test(CPT)scores(t=0.17,p=0.026*)and Hopkins Word Learning Test-Revised test(HVLT-R)scores(t=0.258,p=0.019*).Post-host test showed the CPT and HVLT-R scores of dance group significantly increased compared to the aerobic group,which might be induced by the complex cognitive processing involved in dance.The causality test indicated the symptom change induced the cognitive change in dance group.Brain functional results found significant grey matter VMHC reductions in most regions of schizophrenia compared with healthy controls at baseline,including sensorimotor network,frontoparietal network,default mode network.There were significantly increased VMHC scores in left ventromedial prefrontal lobe,left precentral,verim＿6 after dance training,meanwhile,significantly decreased VMHC scores in left anterior cingulate cortex,left middle frontal gyrus and left putamen after aerobic training.The results indicated dance training not only improved brain functional collaboration but also prevented brain functional declines in schizophrenia.Besides,all the areas which improved or maintained after dance intervention,were all within the attenuated brain areas at baseline.The brain plasticity suggested dance training might firstly improve the sensorimotor integration within the cortical basal-ganglia loop,and then positively enhanced frontoparietal network and default mode network on a base of higher sensorimotor intergration.In conclution,Dance training might affect the interaction within higher brain regions from the bottom-up manner and then facilitate remitting clinical symptoms and improving cognitive functions in schizophrenia.