Abnormal effective connectivity in the psychosis high-risk state

In a recently published fMRI study (Dauvermann et al., 2013), nonlinear dynamic causal modeling (DCM) was used to examine condition-specific effective connectivity in subjects at high genetic risk of schizophrenia. The authors concluded that nonlinear DCM could lead to new insights in the development of psychotic symptoms and functional and effective dysconnection at the network level in subjects at high familial risk. In this paper, we place these interesting findings in the context of recent evidence from bilinear DCM studies in subjects at high clinical risk with an at-risk mental state (ARMS) for psychosis by considering their consistency and potential differences with implications for future research in the field of emerging psychosis.