A new study is mapping out a novel way to use grip strength as a tool to better help researchers understand and treat psychosis.
While paranoia and hallucinations are commonly associated with psychosis, it can often begin with more subtle disruptions to the brain’s motor network.
“If psychosis is a house on fire, symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations are the smoke. In a fire you don’t target the smoke, you target the fire and its source,” says author of the study, Assistant Professor Alexandra Moussa-Tooks from Indiana University.
“And yet, currently that’s not how we approach treatment for psychosis.”
Published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, the study is the first to suggest well-being and grip strength share common brain connectivity patterns.
“Poor grip strength has been associated with many negative outcomes in a variety of people: lower well-being, higher risk of mortality, poor day-to-day functioning, poor quality of life,” explains Moussa-Tooks.
Grip strength is widely recognised as one of the most reliable markers of health, indicating everything from blood pressure to respiratory rates.
“But it hasn’t been well studied in relation to brain function or early psychosis,” says Moussa-Tooks.
“Our study looks at how grip strength may be an important sign of brain and psychological health in early psychosis.”
The research
To conduct the research, the team analysed resting-state MRIs and the grip strength of 89 individuals in the first five years of psychotic illness and compared these results to a control sample of 51 individuals.
Results show that participants in the first five years of psychotic illness had both lower grip strength and lower well-being scores than the control group.
Across the study, the researchers focused on three key brain regions – the sensorimotor cortex, the cerebellum and the anterior cingulate cortex. Each of the brain regions was shown to be connected to the brain’s default mode network.
Those who showed higher grip strength and well-being also tended to have more connectivity between the three identified regions and the default mode network.
“Our findings are particularly exciting because they identify potential brain targets for new treatments for psychosis,” said first author Heather Burrell Ward.
Based on these findings the researchers suggest the potential to use transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) on the brain to increase connectivity between these three brain regions and the network in cases of psychosis, although further research is needed.
Even simple activities like exercise and motor training to strengthen these brain networks may provide science with promising strategies to treat psychosis.
“Our work is showing that these seemingly simple metrics can help us understand disturbances not only in the motor system, but across complex brain systems that give rise to the complex symptoms we see in psychosis,” says Moussa-Tooks.
Referring back to the house fire analogy, Moussa-Tooks says detecting motor disturbances like grip strength “helps us get closer to identifying where the fire may have started and spread.”
“They are more fundamental in the sense that they’re easier to link to different disturbances in the brain.”