White Tonya, Andreasen Nancy C, Nopoulos Peggy, Magnotta Vincent
Univeristy of Iowa, Iowa City, USA.
Biol Psychiatry. 2003 Aug 15;54(4):418-26. doi: 10.1016/s0006-3223(03)00065-9.
Gyrification is an important index of brain development. We used magnetic resonance scanning technology to compare brain surface morphology and measures of gyrification in children and adolescents with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder and in age-equivalent healthy controls.
Magnetic resonance scans were obtained from 42 patients and 24 healthy controls, mean age 17.7 years for both groups. We employed novel quantitative measures of brain morphology, including cortical thickness and a variety of indices of sulcal and gyral curvature. We examined these measures in the whole brain and in the frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes.
There were significant decreases in cortical thickness in the patients. This was most pronounced in the cortical tissue that underlies the sulci. The patient group had significantly more flattened curvature in the sulci and more steeped or peaked curvature in the gyri.
This study quantitatively examines cortical thickness and surface morphology in children and adolescents with schizophrenia. Patients with schizophrenia demonstrated patterns of brain morphology that were distinctly different from healthy controls. In light of current theories of the formation of gyri and sulci, these changes may reflect aberrations in cerebral and subcortical connectivity.
脑回化是大脑发育的一项重要指标。我们运用磁共振扫描技术，比较了患有精神分裂症谱系障碍的儿童和青少年与年龄匹配的健康对照者的脑表面形态及脑回化测量值。
对42例患者和24名健康对照者进行了磁共振扫描，两组的平均年龄均为17.7岁。我们采用了脑形态的新型定量测量方法，包括皮质厚度以及多种脑沟和脑回曲率指数。我们在全脑以及额叶、颞叶、顶叶和枕叶中检查了这些测量值。
患者的皮质厚度显著降低。这在脑沟下方的皮质组织中最为明显。患者组的脑沟曲率明显更平缓，脑回曲率更陡峭或更尖。
本研究定量检查了患有精神分裂症的儿童和青少年的皮质厚度和表面形态。精神分裂症患者表现出与健康对照者明显不同的脑形态模式。根据当前关于脑沟和脑回形成的理论，这些变化可能反映了大脑和皮质下连接的异常。
