Fairchild Graeme, Toschi Nicola, Sully Kate, Sonuga-Barke Edmund J S, Hagan Cindy C, Diciotti Stefano, Goodyer Ian M, Calder Andrew J, Passamonti Luca
Academic Unit of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2016 Sep;57(9):1018-26. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.12581. Epub 2016 Jun 15.
Neuroimaging methods that allow researchers to investigate structural covariance between brain regions are increasingly being used to study psychiatric disorders. Structural covariance analyses are particularly well suited for studying disorders with putative neurodevelopmental origins as they appear sensitive to changes in the synchronized maturation of different brain regions. We assessed interregional correlations in cortical thickness as a measure of structural covariance, and applied this method to investigate the coordinated development of different brain regions in conduct disorder (CD). We also assessed whether structural covariance measures could differentiate between the childhood-onset (CO-CD) and adolescence-onset (AO-CD) subtypes of CD, which may differ in terms of etiology and adult outcomes.
We examined interregional correlations in cortical thickness in male youths with CO-CD or AO-CD relative to healthy controls (HCs) in two independent datasets. The age range in the Cambridge sample was 16-21 years (mean: 18.0), whereas the age range of the Southampton sample was 13-18 years (mean: 16.7). We used FreeSurfer to perform segmentations and applied structural covariance methods to the resulting parcellations.
In both samples, CO-CD participants displayed a strikingly higher number of significant cross-cortical correlations compared to HC or AO-CD participants, whereas AO-CD participants presented fewer significant correlations than HCs. Group differences in the strength of the interregional correlations were observed in both samples, and each set of results remained significant when controlling for IQ and comorbid attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms.
This study provides new evidence for quantitative differences in structural brain organization between the CO-CD and AO-CD subtypes, and supports the hypothesis that both subtypes of CD have neurodevelopmental origins.
神经成像方法使研究人员能够研究脑区之间的结构协方差，越来越多地被用于研究精神疾病。结构协方差分析特别适合研究具有假定神经发育起源的疾病，因为它们似乎对不同脑区同步成熟的变化敏感。我们评估了皮质厚度的区域间相关性作为结构协方差的一种度量，并应用此方法研究品行障碍（CD）中不同脑区的协调发育。我们还评估了结构协方差度量是否能够区分CD的儿童期起病（CO-CD）和青春期起病（AO-CD）亚型，这两种亚型在病因和成人结局方面可能有所不同。
我们在两个独立的数据集中检查了患有CO-CD或AO-CD的男性青少年相对于健康对照（HC）的皮质厚度区域间相关性。剑桥样本的年龄范围是16 - 21岁（平均：18.0），而南安普敦样本的年龄范围是13 - 18岁（平均：16.7）。我们使用FreeSurfer进行分割，并将结构协方差方法应用于所得的脑区划分。
在两个样本中，与HC或AO-CD参与者相比，CO-CD参与者表现出显著更多的跨皮质显著相关性，而AO-CD参与者的显著相关性比HC少。在两个样本中均观察到区域间相关性强度的组间差异，并且在控制智商和共病的注意力缺陷/多动障碍症状后，每组结果仍然显著。
本研究为CO-CD和AO-CD亚型之间脑结构组织的定量差异提供了新证据，并支持CD的两种亚型都有神经发育起源这一假设。
