Fornito Alex, Yücel Murat, Wood Stephen J, Adamson Chris, Velakoulis Dennis, Saling Michael M, McGorry Patrick D, Pantelis Christos
Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre, Department of Psychiatry, The University of Melbourne and Melbourne Health, Australia.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2008 Apr;29(4):478-89. doi: 10.1002/hbm.20412.
The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) appears to be critically involved in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, but past attempts at characterizing pathological changes in the region using magnetic resonance imaging have been restricted by a limited appreciation of its functional and anatomical diversity and a reliance on relatively coarse metrics (e.g., volume) to index anatomical change. In this study, we applied a novel, surface-based protocol to T1-weighted scans acquired from 40 first episode schizophrenia patients and 40 healthy controls individually matched for age, sex, and morphology of the paracingulate sulcus, a major anatomical variation that has been shown to affect morphometric estimates in the region. The surface-based approach enabled calculation of regional grey matter volume, surface area and curvature, cortical thickness, and depth of the cingulate sulcus, with sub-millimeter precision. Relative to controls, schizophrenia patients displayed a bilateral reduction in thickness of paralimbic regions of the ACC, along with a concomitant increase in surface area of both the limbic and paralimbic ACC. No differences were identified for regional grey matter volume, surface curvature, or CS depth. These findings illustrate the advantages of moving beyond traditional volume-based approaches when investigating cortical morphometry, and indicate that the early stages of schizophrenia are associated with a specific pattern of ACC abnormalities that cannot be attributed to variations in sulcal and gyral morphology.
前扣带回皮质（ACC）似乎在精神分裂症的病理生理学中起着关键作用，但过去使用磁共振成像来表征该区域病理变化的尝试受到了限制，原因在于对其功能和解剖学多样性的认识有限，以及依赖相对粗略的指标（如体积）来衡量解剖学变化。在本研究中，我们将一种基于表面的新方案应用于从40名首发精神分裂症患者和40名年龄、性别以及扣带旁沟形态相匹配的健康对照个体获取的T1加权扫描图像。扣带旁沟是一种主要的解剖变异，已被证明会影响该区域的形态测量估计。基于表面的方法能够以亚毫米精度计算区域灰质体积、表面积和曲率、皮质厚度以及扣带沟深度。相对于对照组，精神分裂症患者双侧ACC边缘旁区域的厚度减小，同时边缘和边缘旁ACC的表面积增加。在区域灰质体积、表面曲率或扣带沟深度方面未发现差异。这些发现说明了在研究皮质形态测量时超越传统基于体积的方法的优势，并表明精神分裂症的早期阶段与ACC异常的特定模式相关，这种模式不能归因于脑沟和脑回形态的变化。
