Csernansky J G, Joshi S, Wang L, Haller J W, Gado M, Miller J P, Grenander U, Miller M I
Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1998 Sep 15;95(19):11406-11. doi: 10.1073/pnas.95.19.11406.
Theories of the pathophysiology of schizophrenia have implicated the hippocampus, but controversy remains regarding hippocampal abnormalities in patients with schizophrenia. In vivo studies of hippocampal anatomy using high resolution magnetic resonance scanning and manual methods for volumetric measurement have yielded inconclusive results, perhaps because of the normal variability in hippocampal volume and the error involved in manual measurement techniques. To resolve this controversy, high dimensional transformations of a computerized brain template were used to compare hippocampal volumes and shape characteristics in 15 matched pairs of schizophrenia and control subjects. The transformations were derived from principles of general pattern matching and were constrained according to the physical properties of fluids. The analysis and comparison of hippocampal shapes based on these transformations were far superior to the comparison of hippocampal volumes or other global indices of hippocampal anatomy in showing a statistically significant difference between the two groups. In the schizophrenia subjects, hippocampal shape deformations were found to be localized to subregions of the structure that send projections to prefrontal cortex. The results of this study demonstrate that abnormalities of hippocampal anatomy occur in schizophrenia and support current hypotheses that schizophrenia involves a disturbance of hippocampal-prefrontal connections. These results also show that comparisons of neuroanatomical shapes can be more informative than volume comparisons for identifying individuals with neuropsychiatric diseases, such as schizophrenia.
精神分裂症的病理生理学理论涉及海马体，但对于精神分裂症患者海马体异常仍存在争议。使用高分辨率磁共振扫描和手动体积测量方法对海马体解剖结构进行的活体研究结果尚无定论，这可能是由于海马体体积的正常变异性以及手动测量技术所涉及的误差。为了解决这一争议，利用计算机化脑模板的高维变换来比较15对匹配的精神分裂症患者和对照受试者的海马体体积和形状特征。这些变换源自一般模式匹配原则，并根据流体的物理特性进行约束。基于这些变换对海马体形状进行分析和比较，在显示两组之间具有统计学显著差异方面，远优于对海马体体积或海马体解剖结构的其他整体指标进行比较。在精神分裂症患者中，发现海马体形状变形局限于向额叶前皮质发送投射的结构子区域。本研究结果表明，精神分裂症患者存在海马体解剖结构异常，并支持当前关于精神分裂症涉及海马体 - 额叶前皮质连接紊乱的假说。这些结果还表明，对于识别患有神经精神疾病（如精神分裂症）的个体，神经解剖形状的比较可能比体积比较更具信息量。
