Dissociable Anterior and Posterior Beta-Burst Dynamics Track Thought Disorder in Schizophrenia

Abstract

BackgroundThought disorder in schizophrenia reflects disrupted internal model maintenance in predictive processing. Beta oscillations have been proposed to index top-down predictive signalling, but prior resting-state studies have focused on spectral power, overlooking transient burst dynamics that enable the stabilization and reinstatement of internal representations, especially in the default mode network (DMN). MethodsResting-state MEG was acquired from 25 patients (7 females) with schizophrenia and 25 matched controls (8 females) between May 2024 and October 2025. Beta bursts (15-30 Hz) were extracted from source-localized cortical time series, and burst rate, duration, power, and inter-regional synchrony were quantified. Associations with computationally-derived semantic and syntactic speech features were assessed using principal-component regression within patients. ResultsConventional beta power did not differ between groups after correction. In contrast, beta-burst dynamics showed significant group-by-anterior-posterior-position interactions for burst rate (p = 0.018), power (p = 0.0014) and duration (p < 0.001). Within the DMN, patients showed shorter inferior parietal burst duration (t(46.0) = -2.74, FDR-p = 0.0343) and increased burst synchrony within left prefrontal cortex (t(31.0) = 2.81, FDR-p = 0.0343) and between prefrontal cortices (t(29.8) = 2.73, FDR-p = 0.0423). Within patients, burst components predicted speech organization (R{superscript 2} = 0.47, F(3,19) = 5.66, p = 0.006), driven by the inferior parietal burst-duration component ({beta} = -0.55, p = 0.0036), but did not predict overall clinical severity. LimitationsThe modest patient sample, short resting-state recording, cross-sectional design, and lack of laminar specificity limit causal and mechanistic inference; burst-speech associations require replication. ConclusionSchizophrenia was associated with dissociable anterior and posterior beta-burst abnormalities that tracked objective speech markers of thought disorder. These findings suggest impaired hierarchical coordination of predictive beta signalling as a candidate mechanism linking intrinsic network dysfunction to disorganized thought.