Cortical Abnormalities in Schizophrenia Identified by Structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE Cortical Abnormalities in Schizophrenia Identified by Structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging Jill M. Goldstein, PhD; Julie M. Goodman, PhD; Larry J. Seidman, PhD; David N. Kennedy, PhD; Nikos Makris, MD, PhD; Hang Lee, PhD; Jason Tourville; Verne S. Caviness, Jr, MD, DPhil; Stephen V. Faraone, PhD; Ming T. Tsuang, MD, PhD Background: Relatively few magnetic resonance imag- umes of brain regions, adjusted for age- and sex-corrected ing studies of schizophrenia have investigated the en- head size, were used to compare patients and controls. tire cerebral cortex. Most focus on only a few areas within a lobe or an entire lobe. To assess expected regional al- Results: The greatest volumetric reductions and largest terations in cortical volumes, we used a new method to effect sizes were in the middle frontal gyrus and paralim- segment the entire neocortex into 48 topographically de- bic brain regions, such as the frontomedial and fronto- fined brain regions. We hypothesized, based on previ- orbital cortices, anterior cingulate and paracingulate gyri, ous empirical and theoretical work, that dorsolateral pre- and the insula. In addition, the supramarginal gyrus, which frontal and paralimbic cortices would be significantly is densely connected to prefrontal and cingulate cortices, volumetrically reduced in patients with schizophrenia was also significantly reduced in patients. Patients also had compared with normal controls. subtle volumetric increases in other cortical areas with strong reciprocal connections to the paralimbic areas that Methods: Twenty-nine patients with DSM-III-R schizo- were volumetrically reduced. phrenia were systematically sampled from 3 public outpa- tient service networks in the Boston, Mass, area. Healthy Conclusion: Findings using our methods have impli- subjects, recruited from catchment areas from which the cations for understanding brain abnormalities in schizo- patients were drawn, were screened for psychopathologic phrenia and suggest the importance of the paralimbic ar- disorders and proportionately matched to patients by age, eas and their connections with prefrontal brain regions. sex, ethnicity, parental socioeconomic status, reading abil- ity, and handedness. Analyses of covariance of the vol- Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1999;56:537-547 EVERAL MODELS havebeenpro- Despite the current emphasis on the posed to explain the wide- importance of cortical abnormalities in spread brain abnormalities in schizophrenia, structural imaging stud- patients with schizophrenia. ies of the entire cortex are relatively few. Early anatomical models were In fact, of 67 studies recently reviewed,8 based largely on hypothesized focal abnor- only 16 examined more than one cortical S 1 malities in particular brain regions, derived brain region in more than one lobe. Stud- mainly from adult lesion models of neuro- ies that have examined the entire cortex psychiatric disorders. Schizophrenia has have sampled primarily men and ac- more recently been understood as, in part, quired images with relatively large slices— a neurodevelopmental disorder2,3 in which 5-mm slices with 2.5-mm gaps.17,20,21 The altered connectivity or multifocal abnor- relatively small number of cortical struc- malities are more likely than focal dis- tural imaging studies may be due, in part, orders.4-6 The most frequently replicated to the difficult and time-consuming na- findings have been in subcortical structures, ture of segmenting these relatively small suchasthehippocampalregion7-10 andthala- areas of the brain. Furthermore, until re- mus.10,11 An increasing number of studies, cently, methods to assess in vivo the subtle however, have demonstrated abnormalities volumetric reductions in small cortical re- in cortical brain regions,12-21 indicative of gions, which require fine distinctions be- developmental origins.12,13,20,22-24 Neuro- tween brain regions, were not available for pathologicandneuralnetworkfindingshave the analysis of brain images. Thus far, most The affiliations of the authors suggested that schizophrenia may involve of the subtle abnormalities in the cortex appear in the acknowledgement a defect in neuronal migration,22-24 myelina- have been identified at the cellular level section at the end of the article. tion,5 and/or corticocortical pruning.25-27 using postmortem techniques. ARCH GEN PSYCHIATRY/ VOL 56, JUNE 1999 537 ©1999 American Medical Association. All rights reserved. Downloaded From: https://jamanetwork.com/ on 10/01/2021 METHODS The healthy controls were a proportionately matched comparison group. There were no significant differences in sex distribution, age, ethnicity, parental socioeconomic SAMPLE status, education, Wide Range Achievement Reading54 score, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale–Revised55,56 vocabulary Patients were systematically sampled from the universe of score, and handedness. There was a significant (P = .01) dif- outpatients at 3 public psychiatric hospitals in the Boston, ference in IQ, which is typical for schizophrenia. Mass, area that serve primarily patients with psychotic dis- orders.45-47 Inclusion criteria consisted of ages between 25 DIAGNOSTIC PROCEDURES and 66 years, at least an eighth-grade education, English as the first language, and an estimated IQ of at least 70. Exclu- Research DSM-III-R diagnoses were based on the Schedule sion criteria for subjects were substance abuse within the past for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia57 and a system- 6 months, history of a head injury with documented cogni- atic review of the medical record. Patients primarily had un- tive sequelae or loss of consciousness longer than 5 min- differentiated or paranoid subtypes (Table 1). Interviews were utes, neurologic disease or damage, mental retardation, medi- obtained by master’s level interviewers with extensive diag- cal illnesses that substantially impair neurocognitive function, nostic interviewing experience. Senior investigators (Drs and a history of electroconvulsive treatment. Written in- Goldstein and Seidman) reviewed the transcripts from the formed consent was obtained after a complete description interview and the medical records to determine the consen- of the study was given to the subjects. sus, best-estimate, lifetime diagnosis. Blindness of assess- Healthy control subjects were recruited through ad- ments among psychiatric and MRI data was maintained. vertisements in the catchment areas and notices posted on bulletin boards at the hospitals from which the patients were IMAGING PROCEDURES recruited. They were proportionately matched to patients by age, sex, ethnicity, parental socioeconomic status,49 read- Image Acquisition ing ability, and handedness. Control subjects were screened for current psychopathological disorders using a short form Magnetic resonance imaging scans were acquired at the of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory50 and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Center of the Massachusetts a family history of psychoses or psychiatric hospital ad- General Hospital, Boston, with a 1.5-T MRI scanner (Gen- missions. We excluded potential controls if they had a cur- eral Electric Signa scanner; General Electric Corporation, rent psychopathological disorder; a lifetime history of any Waukesha, Wis). Contiguous 3.1-mm coronal spoiled- psychosis; a family history of psychosis or psychiatric hos- gradient echo images of the entire brain were obtained us- pitalization; or a score on any clinical or validity scale on ing the following parameters: repetition time, 40 millisec- the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, except onds; echo time, 8 milliseconds; flip angle, 50°; field of view, the Masculinity-Femininity scale, above 70. 30 cm; matrix, 2563256; and averages, 1. The MRI scans Patients were included if they had a DSM-III-R51 clini- were processed and analyzed at the Massachusetts Gen- cal diagnosis of schizophrenia. (Patients were rediag- eral Hospital Center for Morphometric Analysis for fur- nosed by research criteria, as described in the subsection ther processing and analysis. “Diagnostic Procedures.”) The sample consisted of 29 pa- Data were analyzed using image analysis workstations tients, 17 (59%) of them male. Table 1 presents a sum- (Sun Microsystems Inc, Mountain View, Calif). Images were mary of the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics positionally normalized by imposing a standard 3-dimen- of the patients and controls. sional coordinate system on each 3-dimensional MRI scan, The patients were a middle-aged sample, primarily non- using the midpoints of the decussations of the anterior and Hispanic white (25 [86%]), with an average education of posterior commissures and the midsagittal plane at the level partial college, who came from a middle to lower-middle of the posterior commissure as points of reference for rota- socioeconomic status. Measures of premorbid and cur- tion and (nondeformation) transformation.38,58 Scans were rent IQ were in the average range. They had a mean ± SD then resliced into normalized 3.1-mm coronal, 1.0-mm axial, age at illness onset of 23.6 ± 5.8 years (range, 16-45 years), and 1.0-mm sagittal scans and were analyzed. Positional nor- with 4.2 ± 3.1 hospital admissions, reflecting 22.0 ± 9.9 malization overcomes potential problems caused by varia- months of hospitalization and 20.9 ± 10.2 years of illness. tion in head position of subjects during scanning. The daily chlorpromazine-equivalent dose was 689.9 ± 591.6 mg of typical neuroleptic medications. In general, the pa- Gray Matter–White Matter Image