title: Decreased bilateral thalamic gray matter volume in first-episode schizophrenia with prominent hallucinatory symptoms: A volumetric MRI study.
abstract: Studies comparing gray matter (GM) volume of schizophrenic patients with or without auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) to that of normal controls remain controversial. This project aims to investigate changes of GM volumes of drug-naïve schizophrenic patients with and without AVHs. Eighteen first episode schizophrenic (FES) patients with AVHs, 18 FES patients without AVHs, and 18 healthy controls were scanned using structural MRI. Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis was conducted to investigate changes of GM volume among the three groups. Patients with and without AVHs exhibited reduced GM volumes relative to normal controls in the left superior temporal gyrus, frontal regions, cerebellum and caudate. Further analysis of the GM of subcortical structures found that patients with AVHs had reduced thalamic volume than healthy controls. No significant difference was found between patients with and without AVHs. Significant correlation was found between the total scores of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale and bilateral thalamic volume. ROC analysis of thalamic volumes of the patients with AVHs and normal controls showed that the area under the curve was 0.698 (P = 0.043). The decreased thalamic volumes might serve as a biomarker for discriminating FES AVHs patients from normals.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Psychology, The Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710032, China.|The Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Brain Imaging (CCBBI), Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
authors.forename: Peng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Xijing Hospital, The Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710032, China.
authors.forename: Yibin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xi
authors.affiliation: The Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Brain Imaging (CCBBI), Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
authors.forename: Zhong-Lin
authors.initials: ZL
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Xijing Hospital, The Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710032, China.
authors.forename: Yunchun
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: The Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Brain Imaging (CCBBI), Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
authors.forename: Xiangrui
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60612, USA.
authors.forename: Weiguo
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Psychology, The Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710032, China.
authors.forename: Xia
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Xijing Hospital, The Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710032, China.
authors.forename: Long-Biao
authors.initials: LB
authors.lastname: Cui
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Xijing Hospital, The Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710032, China.
authors.forename: Qingrong
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Tan
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Xijing Hospital, The Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710032, China.
authors.forename: Wenming
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Xijing Hospital, The Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710032, China.
authors.forename: Chen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Psychology, The Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710032, China.
authors.forename: Danmin
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Miao
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Xijing Hospital, The Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710032, China.
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yin
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D066128:Gray Matter / Q000473:pathology*; D006212:Hallucinations; D006801:Humans; D007031:Hypothalamus / Q000473:pathology*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009929:Organ Size; D012372:ROC Curve; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000473:pathology*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D055815:Young Adult