Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8655, Japan.
Schizophr Res. 2011 Nov;132(2-3):183-9. doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2011.07.006. Epub 2011 Jul 23.
The similarity between psychotic symptoms in patients with schizophrenia such as hallucinations and delusions and those caused by administration of methamphetamine has been accepted. While the etiology of schizophrenia remains unclear, methamphetamine induced psychosis, which is obviously occurred by methamphetamine administration, had been widely considered as a human pharmaceutical model of exogenous psychosis. Although volume reductions in medial temporal lobe structure in patients with schizophrenia have repeatedly been reported, those in patients with methamphetamine psychosis have not yet been clarified. Magnetic resonance images (MRI) were obtained from 20 patients with methamphetamine psychosis and 20 age, sex, parental socio-economic background, and IQ matched healthy controls. A reliable manual tracing methodology was employed to measure the gray matter volume of the amygdala and the hippocampus from MRIs. Significant gray matter volume reductions of both the amygdala and hippocampus were found bilaterally in the subjects with methamphetamine psychosis compared with the controls. The degree of volume reduction was significantly greater in the amygdala than in hippocampus. While the total gray, white matter and intracranial volumes were also significantly smaller-than-normal in the patients; the regional gray matter volume reductions in these medial temporal structures remained statistically significant even after these global brain volumes being controlled. The prominent volume reduction in amygdala rather than that in hippocampus could be relatively specific characteristics of methamphetamine psychosis, since previous studies have shown significant volume reductions less frequently in amygdala than in hippocampus of the other psychosis such as schizophrenia.
精神分裂症患者的精神病症状（如幻觉和妄想）与甲基苯丙胺引起的精神病症状相似，这一点已得到公认。虽然精神分裂症的病因仍不清楚，但明显由甲基苯丙胺引起的精神病，已被广泛认为是一种外源性精神病的人类药物模型。尽管精神分裂症患者的内侧颞叶结构体积减少已被反复报道，但甲基苯丙胺引起的精神病患者的情况尚未得到阐明。我们从 20 名甲基苯丙胺引起的精神病患者和 20 名年龄、性别、父母社会经济背景和智商匹配的健康对照者中获得了磁共振图像（MRI）。采用可靠的手动追踪方法从 MRI 测量杏仁核和海马体的灰质体积。与对照组相比，甲基苯丙胺引起的精神病患者双侧杏仁核和海马体的灰质体积均显著减少。杏仁核的体积减少程度明显大于海马体。虽然患者的总灰质、白质和颅内体积也明显小于正常，但这些内侧颞叶结构的局部灰质体积减少在控制这些全脑体积后仍具有统计学意义。杏仁核而不是海马体的明显体积减少可能是甲基苯丙胺引起的精神病的相对特异性特征，因为以前的研究表明，在其他精神病（如精神分裂症）中，杏仁核的体积减少比海马体更不常见。
