Mapping of grey matter changes in schizophrenia

Studies of brain changes in schizophrenia have suggested that the disorder is associated with reductions in both global and regional grey matter. In t his study, we used structural neuroimaging to differentiate between these t wo types of change and to examine regional grey matter throughout the whole brain. Grey matter from magnetic resonance images was segmented and transf ormed into stereotactic space, and patients with schizophrenia and controls were compared with respect to regional grey matter (after compensating for global grey matter differences). In two preliminary analyses to test our m ethodology, we demonstrated that: (1) in the transformed grey matter maps, voxel values at the location of the caudate nuclei were correlated with reg ion-of-interest measurements of caudate area in native image space, and (2) the technique detected regional grey matter changes resulting from artific ial lesions created in the native images. We then used a factorial design t o examine data from two studies, comprising a total of 42 schizophrenics an d 52 controls. Analysis of the main effect of schizophrenia on regional gre y matter revealed significant reductions in (a) the right temporal pole, in sula and amygdala, (b) the left temporal pole, insula and dorsolateral pref rontal cortex. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.