Cortical and subcortical morphology deficits in cerebral gray matter in patients with schizophrenia and not affected siblings

Abstract

Objective

Explore the basis of cortical morphometry in patients with schizophrenia and non-affected siblings by Magnetic Resonance Structural analyzing cortical thickness.

Methods

Twenty-nine patients with schizophrenia treated with atypical antipsychotics and clinically stable in the last 6 months were recruited. Twenty-three not affected siblings of patients with schizophrenia and 37 healthy volunteers were recruited. Magnetic Resonance Structural was performed. FreeSurfer the brain imaging software package for analysis of Cortical Thickness is used. In the analysis of group differences in cortical thickness (CT) with the general linear model (GLM), the P-value was established in 0003 following the Bonferroni correction to control for multiple comparisons (seven regions of interest a priori in each hemisphere).

Results

Significant differences in cortical thickness between patients and healthy controls. Differences between groups were calculated by general linear model (GLM) with age and sex as covairables (Table 1).

Conclusions

In applying the correction for multiple comparisons, differences in bilateral-lateral orbitofrontal, medial orbitofrontal-right and left temporal transverse frontal cortex are significant. Our study replicates previous findings and provides further evidence of abnormalities in the cerebral cortex, particularly in the frontal and temporal regions, being characteristic of schizophrenia.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

Acknowledgements

L. Galindo is a Rio-Hortega-fellowship-(ISC-III; CM14/00111).

Fig. 1 Significant differences in cortical thickness in healthy controls, not affected siblings and patients with schizophrenia. P: patients; S: siblings; C: controls.