Table 1. Demographic and clinical characteristics for first-episode schizophrenia patients both at baseline and follow-up and their matched healthy controls.

Variable	Patients at Baseline (n = 42)	Patients at Follow-up (n = 42)	Controls (n = 38)	Analysisa		Analysisb
	M ± SD	M ± SD	M ± SD	t	P	t	P
Age(years)	24.86 ± 4.80		24.76 ± 4.56	0.09	0.929
Education(years)	10.48 ± 2.84		11.05 ± 2.91	0.90	0.373
Duration of illness(month)	8.38 ± 2.61
PANSS-T	91.90 ± 11.23	67.24 ± 10.10				13.19	<0.001
PANSS-P	25.60 ± 3.75	15.83 ± 3.28				14.58	<0.001
PANSS-N	18.17 ± 5.21	17.07 ± 4.86				1.42	0.163
PANSS-G	48.14 ± 6.46	34.33 ± 4.71				13.37	<0.001
	n		n	χ2	P	χ2	P
Gender(male/female)	27/15		25/13	0.02	0.888
Alcohol use	6		9	1.16	0.282
Tobacco use	9		8	0.002	0.967
Family history of psychiatric illness	15		0
Handedness (right)	42		38

^aPatients at baseline vs. controls, independent-samples T-test.

^bPatients at baseline vs. follow-up, paired-samples T-test.

One patient’s baseline fMRI data was excluded due to the poor quality, and 4 patients withdrew from the follow-up MRI scans. Finally, we collected fMRI data from 41 FESP at baseline, 38 patients after treatment and 38 healthy volunteers. Symptoms severity of all patients (n = 42) was evaluated both at baseline and follow-up with the 30-item Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). PANSS-T = PANSS total scores; PANSS-P = PANSS positive symptom scores; PANSS-N = PANSS negative symptom scores; PANSS-G = PANSS general psychopathological symptom scores; FESP, first-episode schizophrenia patients.