Płonka Olga, Krześniak Alicja, Adamczyk Przemysław
Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.
Laboratory of Brain Imaging, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Warsaw, Poland.
Heliyon. 2020 Jun 8;6(6):e04172. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e04172. eCollection 2020 Jun.
Schizophrenia can be considered a brain disconnectivity condition related to aberrant neurodevelopment that causes alterations in the brain structure, including gyrification of the cortex. Literature findings on cortical folding are incoherent: they report hypogyria in the frontal, superior-parietal and temporal cortices, but also frontal hypergyria. This discrepancy in local gyrification index (LGI) results could be due to the commonly used spherical kernel (Freesurfer), which is a method of analysis that is still not spatially precise enough. In this study we would like to test the spatial accuracy of a novel method based on a shape-adaptive kernel (Cmorph). The analysis of differences in gyrification between chronic schizophrenia outpatients (n = 30) and healthy controls (n = 30) was conducted with two methods: Freesurfer LGI and Cmorph LGI. Widespread differences in the LGI between schizophrenia outpatients and healthy controls were found using both methods. Freesurfer showed hypogyria in the superior temporal gyrus and the right temporal pole; it also showed hypergyria in the rostral-middle-frontal cortex in schizophrenia outpatients. In comparison, Cmorph revealed that hypergyria is equally represented as hypogyria in orbitofrontal and central brain regions. The clusters from Cmorph were smaller and distributed more broadly, covering all lobes of the brain. The presented evidence from disrupted cortical folding in schizophrenia indicates that the shape-adaptive kernel approach has a potential to improve the knowledge on the disrupted cortical folding in schizophrenia; therefore, it could be a valuable tool for further investigation on big sample size.
精神分裂症可被视为一种与异常神经发育相关的大脑连接障碍疾病，这种异常神经发育会导致大脑结构改变，包括皮质回旋。关于皮质折叠的文献研究结果并不一致：研究报告显示额叶、顶上叶和颞叶皮质存在脑回减少，但也有额叶脑回增多的情况。局部脑回指数（LGI）结果的这种差异可能是由于常用的球形核（FreeSurfer）分析方法造成的，该方法在空间上的精确性仍不够高。在本研究中，我们希望测试一种基于形状自适应核（Cmorph）的新方法的空间准确性。我们采用两种方法对30名慢性精神分裂症门诊患者和30名健康对照者的脑回差异进行了分析：FreeSurfer LGI和Cmorph LGI。使用这两种方法均发现精神分裂症门诊患者和健康对照者在LGI上存在广泛差异。FreeSurfer显示颞上回和右侧颞极存在脑回减少；它还显示精神分裂症门诊患者的额中回前部存在脑回增多。相比之下，Cmorph显示眶额和脑中央区域的脑回增多与脑回减少程度相当。Cmorph得到的聚类更小且分布更广泛，覆盖了大脑的所有脑叶。精神分裂症患者皮质折叠紊乱的现有证据表明，形状自适应核方法有潜力增进我们对精神分裂症患者皮质折叠紊乱的认识；因此，它可能是进一步大样本研究的一个有价值的工具。
