Measurement of Morphological Changes in Schizophrenic Patients using Brain Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Kim, Kang; Rho, Jung Kyun; Ryu, Hyun

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
This study was peformed to compare and measure the changes of corpus callosum of the schizophrenic patients with those of controls, to compare according to clinical symptoms, onset age. METHOD: Brain magnetic resonance imaging study was performed in 38 schizophrenic patients and 28 controls, and the authors measured cerebral area, anterior, middle, posterior callosal areas, vertical width, perpendicular width and maximal horizontal callosal length. The schizophrenic patients were assessed by the PANSS. To correct cerebral areas, ANCOVA was used with cerebral areas as covariants. And two-tailed t-test, ANOVA were used to compare callosal measurements according to subgroups.
RESULTS
The schizophrenic patients, compared with controls, were significantly wider in posterior callosal area and thinner in anterior vertical width. The schizophrenic patients with prominent positive symptoms were significantly wider and thicker in middle callosal area, anterior middle vertical width than controls, and those with prominent negative symptoms were significantly thinner in posterior vertical width than those with prominent positive symptoms and wider in anterior area than controls. Early onset patients were significantly thicker in middle perpendicular area than controls.
CONCLUSIONS
There were various controversial findings about corpus callosal pathology of the schizophrenic patients. This study, after correction of cerebral area, revealed increased sizes of several parts of callosal regions, and then it suggested neurodevelopmental abnormalities. And also significant differences in callosal regions according positive and negative symptoms suggested that these reflected the heterogeneities of schizophrenia.