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Abnormal Brain Structure and Function in First-Episode Childhood- and Adolescence-Onset Schizophrenia: Association with Clinical Symptoms
... Indeed, patients with SZ usually do not exhibit significant brain lesions, leaving uncertain the accurate localization of most neuropsychiatric symptoms. Yet due to certain differences in brain structure and function among patients [8], this non-individualized coil placement may partly explain why rTMS treatment is still ineffective in some cases. With the development of precision medicine, the introduction of individualized rTMS in the treatment of SZ is a field calling for further research. ...
... In the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience, mapping domain-and age-specific brain activity patterns is one critical step towards characterizing the normative neuronal development of children's cognitive and affective functions [2,5,10,11]. This will also provide ample opportunities for further brain-inspired applications in the fields of education, mental health, and the diagnosis of children with neurodevelopmental disorders [12][13][14]. ...
The human brain undergoes rapid development during childhood, with significant improvement in a wide spectrum of cognitive and affective functions. Mapping domain- and age-specific brain activity patterns has important implications for characterizing the development of children’s cognitive and affective functions. The current mainstay of brain templates is primarily derived from structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and thus is not ideal for mapping children’s cognitive and affective brain development. By integrating task-dependent functional MRI data from a large sample of 250 children (aged 7 to 12) across multiple domains and the latest easy-to-use and transparent preprocessing workflow, we here created a set of age-specific brain functional activity maps across four domains: attention, executive function, emotion, and risky decision-making. Moreover, we developed a toolbox named Developmental Brain Functional Activity maps across multiple domains that enables researchers to visualize and download domain- and age-specific brain activity maps for various needs. This toolbox and maps have been released on the Neuroimaging Informatics Tools and Resources Clearinghouse website (http://www.nitrc.org/projects/dbfa). Our study provides domain- and age-specific brain activity maps for future developmental neuroimaging studies in both healthy and clinical populations.
... When examining the volume changes of the WM in schizophrenia detected by VBM and TBM, we found that both detected a WM volume reduction in schizophrenia. This result is compatible with several previous studies that also reported a WM volume reduction in schizophrenia using VBM [20,[72][73][74]. One reason for the WM volume reduction in the patients with schizophrenia could be due to the enlargement of ventricles commonly found in schizophrenia; this would compress the WM into a smaller volume [11]. ...
A systematic characterization of the similarities and differences among different methods for detecting structural brain abnormalities in schizophrenia, such as voxel-based morphometry (VBM), tensor-based morphometry (TBM), and projection-based thickness (PBT), is important for understanding the brain pathology in schizophrenia and for developing effective biomarkers for a diagnosis of schizophrenia. However, such studies are still lacking. Here, we performed VBM, TBM, and PBT analyses on T1-weighted brain MR images acquired from 116 patients with schizophrenia and 116 healthy controls. We found that, although all methods detected wide-spread structural changes, different methods captured different information – only 10.35% of the grey matter changes in cortex were detected by all three methods, and VBM only detected 11.36% of the white matter changes detected by TBM. Further, pattern classification between patients and controls revealed that combining different measures improved the classification accuracy (81.9%), indicating that fusion of different structural measures serves as a better neuroimaging marker for the objective diagnosis of schizophrenia.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM) volume alterations in whole-brain structures in patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls using voxel-based morphometry (VBM), and further to assess the correlation between GM and WM volume variations and symptom severity in schizophrenia. A total of 22 patients with schizophrenia and 22 age-matched healthy controls participated. Magnetic resonance image data were processed using SPM8 software with diffeomorphic anatomical registration via an exponentiated Lie algebra (DARTEL) algorithm. Patients with schizophrenia exhibited significantly decreased GM volumes of the insula, superior temporal gyrus (STG), gyrus rectus, and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) compared with healthy controls. The GM volumes of the STG and gyrus rectus were negatively correlated with the positive scales on the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and those of the STG and ACC were negatively correlated with the negative scales. The durations of illness in schizophrenia were negatively correlated with the GM volumes of the insula, STG, and ACC. Patients with schizophrenia exhibited significantly decreased WM volumes of the superior frontal gyrus, inferior temporal gyrus, and STG. The WM volumes of the STG were negatively correlated with the duration of illness. Our findings suggest that GM and WM volume abnormalities in the STG are associated with the psychopathology of schizophrenia.
Background: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and childhood onset schizophrenia (COS) are pediatric neurodevelopmental disorders associated with significant morbidity. Both conditions are thought to share an underlying genetic architecture. A comparison of neuroimaging findings across ASD and COS with a focus on altered neurodevelopmental trajectories can shed light on potential clinical biomarkers and may highlight an underlying etiopathogenesis.
Methods: A comprehensive review of the medical literature was conducted to summarize neuroimaging data with respect to both conditions in terms of structural imaging (including volumetric analysis, cortical thickness and morphology, and region of interest studies), white matter analysis (include volumetric analysis and diffusion tensor imaging) and functional connectivity.
Results: In ASD, a pattern of early brain overgrowth in the first few years of life is followed by dysmaturation in adolescence. Functional analyses have suggested impaired long-range connectivity as well as increased local and/or subcortical connectivity in this condition. In COS, deficits in cerebral volume, cortical thickness, and white matter maturation seem most pronounced in childhood and adolescence, and may level off in adulthood. Deficits in local connectivity, with increased long-range connectivity have been proposed, in keeping with exaggerated cortical thinning.
Conclusion: The neuroimaging literature supports a neurodevelopmental origin of both ASD and COS and provides evidence for dynamic changes in both conditions that vary across space and time in the developing brain. Looking forward, imaging studies which capture the early post natal period, which are longitudinal and prospective, and which maximize the signal to noise ratio across heterogeneous conditions will be required to translate research findings into a clinical environment.
Emerging evidence implicates white matter (WM) abnormalities in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. However, there is considerable heterogeneity in the presentation of WM abnormalities in the existing studies. The object of this study was to evaluate WM integrity in a large sample of patients with first-episode (FE) and chronic schizophrenia in comparison to matched control groups. Our goal was to assess whether WM findings occurred early in the illness or whether these abnormalities developed with the illness over time.
Participants included 114 patients with schizophrenia (31 FE and 83 chronic patients) and 138 matched controls. High-resolution structural and diffusion tensor images were obtained on all participants. Measures of fractional anisotropy (FA) were calculated for the 4 cortical lobes and the cerebellum and brain stem.
FA was significant lower in patients vs controls in the whole brain and individually in the frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal lobes. FA was not significantly different in the brain stem or cerebellum. FA differences were significant only in patients with chronic schizophrenia and not in the FE group.
We found global differences in the WM microstructure in patients with chronic but not FE schizophrenia. These findings suggest progressive alterations in WM microstructure.
Over the last 2 decades, a large number of neurophysiological and neuroimaging studies of patients with schizophrenia have furnished in vivo evidence for dysconnectivity, ie, abnormal functional integration of brain processes. While the evidence for dysconnectivity in schizophrenia is strong, its etiology, pathophysiological mechanisms, and significance for clinical symptoms are unclear. First, dysconnectivity could result from aberrant wiring of connections during development, from aberrant synaptic plasticity, or from both. Second, it is not clear how schizophrenic symptoms can be understood mechanistically as a consequence of dysconnectivity. Third, if dysconnectivity is the primary pathophysiology, and not just an epiphenomenon, then it should provide a mechanistic explanation for known empirical facts about schizophrenia. This article addresses these 3 issues in the framework of the dysconnection hypothesis. This theory postulates that the core pathology in schizophrenia resides in aberrant N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR)-mediated synaptic plasticity due to abnormal regulation of NMDARs by neuromodulatory transmitters like dopamine, serotonin, or acetylcholine. We argue that this neurobiological mechanism can explain failures of self-monitoring, leading to a mechanistic explanation for first-rank symptoms as pathognomonic features of schizophrenia, and may provide a basis for future diagnostic classifications with physiologically defined patient subgroups. Finally, we test the explanatory power of our theory against a list of empirical facts about schizophrenia.
Investigation into the whole brain morphology of early onset schizophrenia (EOS) to date has been sparse. We studied the regional brain volumes in EOS patients, and the correlations between regional volume measures and symptom severity.
A total of 18 EOS patients (onset under 16 years) and 18 controls matched for age, gender, parental socioeconomic status, and height were examined. Voxel-based morphometric analysis using the Brain Analysis Morphological Mapping (BAMM) software package was employed to explore alterations of the regional grey (GM) and white matter (WM) volumes in EOS patients. Symptoms were assessed using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS).
EOS patients had significantly reduced GM volume in the left parahippocampal, inferior frontal, and superior temporal gyri, compared with the controls. They also had less WM volume in the left posterior limb of the internal capsule and the left inferior longitudinal fasciculus. The positive symptom score of PANSS (higher values corresponding to more severe symptoms) was negatively related to GM volume in the bilateral posterior cingulate gyrus. The negative symptom score was positively correlated with GM volume in the right thalamus. As for the association with WM volume, the positive symptom score of PANSS was positively related to cerebellar WM (vermis region), and negatively correlated with WM in the brain stem (pons) and in the bilateral cerebellum (hemisphere region).
Our findings of regional volume alterations of GM and WM in EOS patients coincide with those of previous studies of adult onset schizophrenia patients. However, in brain regions that had no overall structural differences between EOS patients and controls (that is, the bilateral posterior cingulate gyrus, the right thalamus, the cerebellum, and the pons), within-subject analysis of EOS patients alone revealed that there were significant associations of the volume in these areas and the symptom severity. These findings suggest that at an early stage of the illness, especially for those with onset before brain maturation, a wide range of disturbed neural circuits, including these brain regions that show no apparent morphological changes, may contribute to the formation of the symptomatology.
Kendall's coefficient concordance (KCC) can measure the similarity of a number of time series. It has been used for purifying a given cluster in functional MRI (fMRI). In the present study, a new method was developed based on the regional homogeneity (ReHo), in which KCC was used to measure the similarity of the time series of a given voxel to those of its nearest neighbors in a voxel-wise way. Six healthy subjects performed left and right finger movement tasks in event-related design; five of them were additionally scanned in a rest condition. KCC was compared among the three conditions (left finger movement, right finger movement, and the rest). Results show that bilateral primary motor cortex (M1) had higher KCC in either left or right finger movement condition than in rest condition. Contrary to prediction and to activation pattern, KCC of ipsilateral M1 is significantly higher than contralateral M1 in unilateral finger movement conditions. These results support the previous electrophysiologic findings of increasing ipsilateral M1 excitation during unilateral movement. ReHo can consider as a complementary method to model-driven method, and it could help reveal the complexity of the human brain function. More work is needed to understand the neural mechanism underlying ReHo.
Background:
Human brain is a topologically complex network embedded in anatomical space, and anatomical distance may affect functional connectivity (FC) in schizophrenia. However, little is known if and how this effect occurs in adolescent-onset schizophrenia (AOS).
Methods:
We explored long- and short-range FC through resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging in 48 first-episode, drug-naive AOS patients and 31 healthy controls, and we examined if these abnormalities could be utilized to separate patients from controls using receiver operating characteristic curves and support vector machines (SVM).
Results:
Patients had increased long-range positive FC (lpFC) and short-range positive FC (spFC) in the right middle frontal gyrus and right superior medial prefrontal cortex within the anterior default mode network (DMN), decreased lpFC and spFC in several regions of the posterior DMN, and decreased lpFC within the important hubs of salience network (SN). The decreased lpFC in the left superior temporal gyrus was positively correlated with cognitive impairment. We found that SVM has high accuracy (up to 92.4%) in classifying patients and control.
Conclusion:
Disrupted anatomical distance would underlie network-level dysconnectivity, highlighting the importance of the DMN and SN in the neurodevelopment of schizophrenia. Abnormalities of long- and short-range FC in brain regions could discriminate patients from controls with high accuracy.
Objective
Structural and functional abnormalities have been reported in the brain of patients with adolescent-onset schizophrenia (AOS). The brain regional functional synchronization in patients with AOS remains unclear.
Methods
We analyzed resting-state functional magnetic resonance scans in 48 drug-naive patients with AOS and 31 healthy controls by using regional homogeneity (ReHo), a measurement that reflects brain local functional connectivity or synchronization and indicates regional integration of information processing. Then, receiver operating characteristic curves and support vector machines were used to evaluate the effect of abnormal regional homogeneity in differentiating patients from controls.
Results
Patients with AOS showed significantly increased ReHo values in the bilateral superior medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and significantly decreased ReHo values in the left superior temporal gyrus (STG), right precentral lobule, right inferior parietal lobule (IPL), and left paracentral lobule when compared with controls. A combination of the ReHo values in bilateral superior MPFC, left STG, and right IPL was able to discriminate patients from controls with the sensitivity of 88.24%, specificity of 91.89%, and accuracy of 90.14%.
Conclusion
The brain regional functional synchronization abnormalities exist in drug-naive patients with AOS. A combination of ReHo values in these abnormal regions might serve as potential imaging biomarker to identify patients with AOS.
Background
Patients with adolescent-onset schizophrenia (AOS) hold the same but severe form of symptoms with adult-onset schizophrenia, and with worse outcome and poor treatment response to antipsychotics. Several dominant brain regions of schizophrenia patients show significantly abnormal structural and functional connectivity during resting-state scans. However, coherence regional homogeneity (Cohe-ReHo) in drug-naive first-episode patients with AOS remains unclear.
Method
A total of 48 drug-naive first-episode AOS outpatients and 31 healthy controls underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance scans. Cohe-ReHo and support vector machine analyses were used to analyze the data.
Results
Compared with the healthy controls, the AOS group showed significantly decreased Cohe-ReHo values distributed over brain regions, including the left postcentral gyrus, left superior temporal gyrus, left paracentral lobule, right precentral gyrus, right inferior parietal lobule (IPL), right middle frontal gyrus, and bilateral precuneus. No region with increased Cohe-ReHo values was observed in the AOS group compared with healthy controls. In addition, the right IPL was correlated with fluency (r = − 0.324, p = 0.030). However, the correlation was not significant after the Bonferroni correction at p < 0.0083 (0.05/6). A combination of the Cohe-ReHo values in the bilateral precuneus and right IPL discriminated the patients from controls with the sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of 91.67%, 87.10%, and 89.87%, respectively.
Conclusion
Our findings suggested that the AOS patients exhibited diminished Cohe-ReHo values in some regions within the DMN network and sensorimotor network. The abnormalities in particular brain regions (bilateral precuneus and right IPL) may serve as potential biomarkers for AOS.
Background:
Several resting-state neuroimaging studies in schizophrenia indicate an excessive brain activity while others report an incoherent brain activity at rest. No direct evidence for the simultaneous presence of both excessive and incoherent brain activity has been established to date. Moreover, it is unclear whether unaffected siblings of schizophrenia patients who share half of the affected patient's genotype also exhibit the excessive and incoherent brain activity that may render them vulnerable to the development of schizophrenia.
Methods:
27 pairs of schizophrenia patients and their unaffected siblings, as well as 27 healthy controls, were scanned using gradient-echo echo-planar imaging at rest. By using amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF) and regional homogeneity (Reho), we investigated the intensity and synchronization of local spontaneous neuronal activity in three groups.
Results:
We observed that increased amplitude and reduced synchronization (coherence) of spontaneous neuronal activity were shared by patients and their unaffected siblings. The key brain regions with this abnormal neural pattern in both patients and siblings included the middle temporal, orbito-frontal, inferior occipital and fronto-insular gyrus.
Conclusions:
This abnormal neural pattern of excessive and incoherent neuronal activity shared by schizophrenia patients and their healthy siblings may improve our understanding of neuropathology and genetic predisposition in schizophrenia.
The aim of this study was to evaluate the white matter (WM) volume change and its correlation with symptom severity in patients with schizophrenia using voxel-based morphometry. A total of 20 patients with schizophrenia and 20 age-matched healthy controls participated in this study. MR image data were processed using SPM8 software with diffeomorphic anatomical registration through an exponentiated Lie algebra (DARTEL) algorithm. The patients with schizophrenia showed significant decreases (P=0.042) in the WM volumes of the temporal lobe and superior frontal gyrus compared with the healthy controls. The WM volumes of the middle temporal gyrus were negatively correlated with the scores of both the Positive Subscale (Pearson's ρ=-0.68, P=0.001) and the Negative Subscale (ρ=-0.71, P=0.0005) in the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. In addition, the scores of the General Psychopathology Subscale were negatively correlated with the WM volumes of the superior frontal gyrus (ρ=-0.68, P=0.0009). This study evaluated the WM volume of patients with schizophrenia compared with healthy controls using DARTEI-based voxel-based morphometry and also assessed the correlation of the localized WM volume changes with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. These findings will be useful to understand the neuropathology associated with WM abnormality in schizophrenia.
To examine the whole brain white matter morphology in antipsychotic-naive patients with first-episode schizophrenia (FES) and its correlations with symptom severity.
High-resolution T1-weighted images of 64 drug-naive FES patients and 64 matched healthy controls were acquired using a 3 T MR imaging system. Then, optimized voxel-based morphometry was performed to compare the group differences. Finally, correlation analyses were conducted between the white matter volume (WMV) changes and clinical symptoms.
The FES showed significantly decreased WMV in the bilateral posterior limb of the internal capsule (PLIC) and right subgyral frontal white matter. The volume of the bilateral PLIC was negatively correlated with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale positive scores. Positive correlations were observed between all of the changed WMV measures and the Global Assessment of Functioning scores.
The current findings provide further evidence to support internal capsule and subgyral frontal white matter deficits at the early stage of schizophrenia that are potentially related to the core pathophysiology of the disease. Furthermore, these anatomical alterations were related to the clinical symptoms but not the untreated illness duration, suggesting that these deficits are related to aberrations in the neurodevelopmental process and may be relatively stable during the early course of schizophrenia.
This article reviews the literature on structural magnetic resonance imaging findings in pediatric and young adult populations at clinical or genetic high-risk for schizophrenia and early-onset schizophrenia. The implications of this research are discussed for understanding the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and for early intervention strategies. The evidence linking brain structural changes in prepsychosis development and early-onset schizophrenia with disruptions of normal neurodevelopmental processes during childhood or adolescence is described. Future directions are outlined for research to address knowledge gaps regarding the neurobiological basis of brain structural abnormalities in schizophrenia and to improve the usefulness of these abnormalities for preventative interventions.
The clinical severity, impact on development, and poor prognosis of childhood onset schizophrenia may represent a more homogeneous group. Positive symptoms in children are necessary for the diagnosis and hallucinations are more often multimodal. In healthy children and children with a variety of other psychiatric illnesses, hallucinations are not uncommon and diagnosis should not be based on these alone. Childhood onset schizophrenia is an extraordinarily rare illness that is poorly understood but seems continuous with the adult onset disorder. Once a diagnosis is affirmed, aggressive medication treatment combined with family education and individual counseling may defer further deterioration.
Background:
Disrupted white matter (WM) integrity is the pathological hallmark of schizophrenia. Previous studies have reported the cognitive deficits that are associated with WM disruption in schizophrenia with anti-psychiatric treatment. However, no study has yet revealed the correlation between cognition and WM abnormalities in never-medicated chronic schizophrenia.
Methods:
We used the diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) with tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) approach to investigate the whole-brain difference in the WM fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD), axial diffusivity (AD) and radial diffusivity (RD) values between 17 schizophrenia patients and 17 healthy controls matched in age, gender and education level. Patients' cognition was assessed through the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB). We explored the association between WM reduction and cognitive, clinical characteristics (severity of clinical symptoms, age, age of onset, illness duration).
Results:
Voxel-wise statistics revealed that schizophrenia patients showed significant FA reduction in left inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) and left inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), and no difference in MD, AD or RD as compared to healthy subjects. Furthermore, in the patients group, lower FA value of the left ILF and left IFOF significantly correlated with worse processing speed, as well as verbal learning and visual learning abilities. There was no correlation between the FA value and the severity of clinical symptoms, age, and age of onset or illness duration.
Conclusion:
Our results provide evidence to support that the disconnection of WM pathways may contribute to the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and suggest that the disturbance of left ILF and left IFOF integrity may contribute to cognitive deficits in schizophrenia, independent of effects of antipsychotic medication.
Although not consistently replicated, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies in schizophrenia have revealed lower fractional anisotropy (FA) in various white matter regions, a finding consistent with the disruption of white matter integrity. In this study, we used voxel-based DTI to investigate possible whole-brain differences in the white matter FA values between 58 schizophrenia patients and 58 healthy controls. We also explored the association between FA values and clinical symptoms in schizophrenia. Compared with the controls, the schizophrenia patients showed significant FA reductions in bilateral superior longitudinal fasciculus, bilateral inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, and genu of right internal capsule. Furthermore, in the patient group, the FA value of the anterior part of the corpus callosum was negatively correlated with the avolition score on the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms. These findings suggest widespread disruption of white matter integrity in schizophrenia, which could partly explain the severity of negative symptomatology.
The neurodevelopmental hypothesis of schizophrenia provided a valuable framework that allowed a condition that usually presents with frank disorder in adolescence or early adulthood to be understood at least in part as a consequence of events occurring early in development. However, the implications of the neurodevelopmental hypothesis for nosological conceptions of the disorder can only now be fully appreciated. Recent research indicates genetic overlap between schizophrenia and syndromes in which psychopathology is manifest in childhood and that are often grouped together as 'neurodevelopmental disorders' such as autism-spectrum disorders, intellectual disability and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. These findings challenge the aetiological basis of current diagnostic categories and, together with evidence for frequent comorbidity, suggest that we should view the functional psychoses as members of a group of related and overlapping syndromes that result in part from a combination of genetic and environmental effects on brain development and that are associated with specific and general impairments of cognitive function. This has important implications for future research and for the configuration of psychiatric services.
To investigate abnormalities in the structural integrity of brain white matter as suggested by diffusion tensor imaging in adolescents with early-onset schizophrenia (onset of psychosis by age 18).
Twenty-six patients with schizophrenia and 34 age- and gender-matched healthy volunteers received diffusion tensor imaging and structural magnetic resonance imaging examinations. Fractional anisotropy maps were compared between groups in the white matter using a voxelwise analysis after intersubject registration to Talairach space.
Compared with healthy volunteers, patients demonstrated lower fractional anisotropy values in the left anterior cingulate region in close proximity to the caudate nucleus (95% confidence interval of schizophrenic-healthy: -66 to -20). Using regression analysis, the rate of change in fractional anisotropy differed significantly between groups in this region across the age span examined (10-20 years), after adjusting for group differences in premorbid intellectual capacity and parental socioeconomic status. There were no areas of significantly higher fractional anisotropy in patients compared with healthy volunteers.
These data suggest that early-onset schizophrenia is associated with a disruption in the structural integrity of white matter tracts in the anterior cingulate region. These structural abnormalities may contribute to the deficits in motivation, attention, memory, and higher executive functions in adolescents with schizophrenia.
Diffusion tensor imaging studies in schizophrenia have demonstrated lower diffusion anisotropy within white matter that provides information about brain white matter integrity. We have examined whether white matter is abnormal in first-episode schizophrenia by using diffusion tensor imaging. Twenty-one schizophrenic patients and healthy controls underwent diffusion tensor imaging scans that analyzed by using a rigorous voxel-based approach. We found that fractional anisotropy in white matter of the patients was lower than that in controls at the cerebral peduncle, frontal regions, inferior temporal gyrus, medial parietal lobes, hippocampal gyrus, insula, right anterior cingulum bundle and right corona radiata. These results suggested that white matter integrity of the whole brain was disrupted in early illness onset of schizophrenia.
We used a newly reported regional homogeneity approach to measure the temporal homogeneity of blood oxygen level-dependent signal for exploring the brain activity of schizophrenia in a resting state. The results showed decreased regional homogeneity in schizophrenia, which distributed over the bilateral frontal, temporal, occipital, cerebellar posterior, right parietal and left limbic lobes, similar to the findings reported in previous resting state functional studies. The brain regions that showed decreased regional homogeneity are believed to be involved in the psychopathology and pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Our results indicate that abnormal brain activity of schizophrenia may exist in a resting state and the regional homogeneity may be potentially helpful in understanding the resting state of schizophrenia.
Cerebral disconnectivity due to white matter alterations in patients with chronic schizophrenia assessed by diffusion tensor imaging has been reported previously. The aim of this preliminary study is to investigate whether cerebral disconnectivity can be detected as early as the first episode of schizophrenia. Intervoxel coherence values were compared by voxel-based t test in 12 patients with first episode schizophrenia and 12 age- and gender-matched control groups. We detected 14 circumscribed significant clusters (P < 0.02), 3 of them with higher, and 11 of them with lower IC values for patients with schizophrenia than for healthy control groups. We interpret these white matter alterations in different regions to be disconnected fiber tracts already present early in schizophrenic disease progression.
White matter volume change and its correlation with symptom severity in patients with schizophrenia: a VBM-DARTEL study
- G W Kim
- GW Kim