Structural and developmental abnormalities in schizophrenia assessed with MRI

Abstract

Our current MRI studies grow out of earlier pilot work. In our first MRI study, we examined a sample of 38 schizophrenics and 45 normal controls using principally a midsagittal cut for our analyses. In these studies, we focused our emphasis on morphometrics, or the study of structural size that had potential functional significance. In this first study, we observed a significant decrease in frontal lobe size, cerebral size, and (somewhat to our surprise) cranial size [1]. We were unable to explain this finding on the basis of differences between patients and normal controls and possible confounding variables such as sex, height, or weight. In that study, however, it did appear that there was a possible sex effect in the schizophrenic patients, with slightly more males showing the frontal, cerebral, and cranial abnormalities. These findings were relatively striking. 39 percent of the schizophrenic patients had frontal lobe size outside the control range, while percentages for cerebral and cranial size outside the control range were 25 and 18 percent, respectively. In this study, it also appeared that there were abnormalities in callosal shape in the schizophrenic patients, with a reversal of the “normal” sexual dimorphism that has been observed by other investigators [2]. In this study the female schizophrenic patients had smaller splenia than did the males [3].