Altered effective brain connectivity at early response of antipsychotics in first-episode schizophrenia with auditory hallucinations

•We investigated the effective connectivity of cortical networks in patients with FES with auditory hallucinations using DCM of resting-state EEG data.•Medicated patients showed improvement of frontotemporal connectivity.•This study provides the first evidence of early drug response-related alterations in the effective connectivity of cortical networks in schizophrenia.