Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging study of schizophrenia in the context of abnormal neurodevelopment using multiple site data in a Chinese Han population.
Y LiS XieB LiuM SongY ChenP LiL LuL LvH WangHao YanJ YanH ZhangD ZhangTianzi JiangPublished in: Translational psychiatry (2016)
Schizophrenia has increasingly been considered a neurodevelopmental disorder, and the advancement of neuroimaging techniques and associated computational methods has enabled quantitative re-examination of this important theory on the pathogenesis of the disease. Inspired by previous findings from neonatal brains, we proposed that an increase in diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) mean diffusivity (MD) should be observed in the cerebral cortex of schizophrenia patients compared with healthy controls, corresponding to lower tissue complexity and potentially a failure to reach cortical maturation. We tested this hypothesis using dMRI data from a Chinese Han population comprising patients from four different hospital sites. Utilizing data-driven methods based on the state-of-the-art tensor-based registration algorithm, significantly increased MD measurements were consistently observed in the cortex of schizophrenia patients across all four sites, despite differences in psychopathology, exposure to antipsychotic medication and scanners used for image acquisition. Specifically, we found increased MD in the limbic system of the schizophrenic brain, mainly involving the bilateral insular and prefrontal cortices. In light of the existing literature, we speculate that this may represent a neuroanatomical signature of the disorder, reflecting microstructural deficits due to developmental abnormalities. Our findings not only provide strong support to the abnormal neurodevelopment theory of schizophrenia, but also highlight an important neuroimaging endophenotype for monitoring the developmental trajectory of high-risk subjects of the disease, thereby facilitating early detection and prevention.
Keyphrases
- magnetic resonance imaging
- end stage renal disease
- bipolar disorder
- ejection fraction
- newly diagnosed
- chronic kidney disease
- prognostic factors
- peritoneal dialysis
- computed tomography
- functional connectivity
- systematic review
- machine learning
- resting state
- white matter
- molecular dynamics
- patient reported outcomes
- high resolution
- deep learning
- electronic health record
- magnetic resonance
- big data
- patient reported
- mass spectrometry
- cerebral ischemia
- transcranial magnetic stimulation