title: Higher prefrontal cortical thickness in high schizotypal personality trait.
abstract: A model of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders hypothesized that schizotypy shares biomarkers with schizophrenia but due to protective factors such as a greater prefrontal cortex those individuals have a reduced vulnerability to schizophrenia. In contrast to previous studies exploring volumetric brain correlates of schizotypy focussing on clinical samples or relying on between-group comparisons we measured cortical thickness and correlated it with the expression of schizotypal personality traits in a mentally healthy sample. We acquired high-resolution MRI scans from 34 subjects and used FreeSurfer to model the grey-white and pial surfaces for each individual cortex in order to compute the distance between these surfaces to obtain a measure of cortical thickness. Differences in cortical thickness were correlated with positive and negative factors of schizotypy as assessed by means of the schizotypal personality questionnaire. We found a significant positive correlation between right dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and right dorsal premotor cortex/frontal eye fields (dPMC/FEF) and the total schizotypy score, between right DLPFC and the positive factor, and between right temporo-parietal junction and the negative factor of schizotypy. The volume of thalamus was negatively correlated with schizotypy. A significant negative correlation between thalamus volume and dPMC/FEF cortical thickness was observed. One may speculate that this finding is in line with the hypothesis of a compensatory role of greater prefrontal cortex in schizotypy in healthy populations.
authors.affiliation: Charité University Medicine, St. Hedwig Krankenhaus, Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Große Hamburger Straße 5-11, 10115 Berlin, Germany. simone.kuhn@ugent.be
authors.forename: Simone
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kühn
authors.forename: Florian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Schubert
authors.forename: Jürgen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gallinat
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000473:pathology*; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012569:Schizotypal Personality Disorder / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000473:pathology*