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Background: Schizophrenia is a neurodevelopmental disorder with high heritability. Widespread cortical thinning has been identified in schizophrenia, suggesting that it is a result of cortical development deficit. However, the findings of other cortical morphological indexes of patients are inconsistent, and the research on their relationship with genetic risk factors for schizophrenia is rare. Methods: In order to investigate cortical morphology deficits and their disease-related genetic liability in schizophrenia, we analyzed a sample of 33 patients with schizophrenia, 60 biological parents of the patients, as well as 30 young controls for patients and 28 elderly controls for parents with age, sex and education level being well-matched. We calculated vertex-wise measurements of cortical thickness, surface area, local gyrification index, sulcal depth, and their correlation with the clinical and cognitive characteristics. Results: Widespread cortical thinning of the fronto-temporo-parietal region, sulcal flattening of the insula and gyrification reduction of the frontal cortex were observed in schizophrenia patients. Conjunction analysis revealed that patients with schizophrenia and their parents shared significant cortical thinning of bilateral prefrontal and insula, left lateral occipital and fusiform regions (Monte Carlo correction, P<0.05), as well as a trend-level sulcal depth reduction mainly in bilateral insula and occipital cortex. We observed comprehensive cognitive deficits in patients and similar impairment in the speed of processing of their unaffected parents. Significant associations between lower processing speed and thinning of the frontal cortex and flattening of the parahippocampal gyrus were found in patients and their parents, respectively. However, no significant correlation between abnormal measurements of cortical morphology and clinical characteristics was found. Conclusion: The results suggest that cortical morphology may be susceptible to a genetic risk of schizophrenia and could underlie the cognitive dysfunction in patients and their unaffected relatives. The abnormalities shared with unaffected parents allow us to better understand the disease-specific genetic effect on cortical development.
Pubmed ID: 31114205 RIS Download
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Open source software suite for processing and analyzing human brain MRI images. Used for reconstruction of brain cortical surface from structural MRI data, and overlay of functional MRI data onto reconstructed surface. Contains automatic structural imaging stream for processing cross sectional and longitudinal data. Provides anatomical analysis tools, including: representation of cortical surface between white and gray matter, representation of the pial surface, segmentation of white matter from rest of brain, skull stripping, B1 bias field correction, nonlinear registration of cortical surface of individual with stereotaxic atlas, labeling of regions of cortical surface, statistical analysis of group morphometry differences, and labeling of subcortical brain structures.Operating System: Linux, macOS.
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