Characterization of the Fiber Connectivity Profile of the Cerebral Cortex in Schizotypal Personality Disorder: A Pilot Study.
Schizotypal personality disorder (SPD) is considered one of the classic disconnection syndromes. However, the specific cortical disconnectivity pattern has not been fully investigated. In this study, we aimed to explore significant alterations in whole-cortex structural connectivity in SPD individuals (SPDs) by combining the techniques of brain surface morphometry and white matter tractography. Diffusion and structural MR data were collected from 20 subjects with SPD (all males; age, 19.7 ± 0.9 years) and 18 healthy controls (all males; age, 20.3 ± 1.0 years). To measure the structural connectivity for a given unit area of the cortex, the fiber connectivity density (FiCD) value was proposed and calculated as the sum of the fractional anisotropy of all the fibers connecting to that unit area in tractography. Then, the resultant whole-cortex FiCD maps were compared in a vertex-wise manner between SPDs and controls. Compared with normal controls, SPDs showed significantly decreased FiCD in the rostral middle frontal gyrus (crossing BA 9 and BA 10) and significantly increased FiCD in the anterior part of the fusiform/inferior temporal cortex (P < 0.05, Monte Carlo simulation corrected). Moreover, the gray matter volume extracted from the left rostral middle frontal cluster was observed to be significantly greater in the SPD group (P = 0.02). Overall, this study identifies a decrease in connectivity in the left middle frontal cortex as a key neural deficit at the whole-cortex level in SPD, thus providing insight into its neuropathological basis.
Department of Imaging and Interventional Radiology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong, China.
Kai
K
Liu
Department of Imaging and Interventional Radiology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong, China.
Teng
T
Zhang
Department of Radiology, Affiliated Zhongshan Hospital of Dalian University Dalian, China.
Qing
Q
Zhang
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Dalian Medical University Dalian, China.
Yueji
Y
Sun
Department of Radiology, Affiliated Zhongshan Hospital of Dalian University Dalian, China.
Jianlin
J
Wu
Department of Radiology, The Second People's Hospital of Shenzhen Shenzhen, China.
Yi
Y
Lei
Department of Imaging and Interventional Radiology, The Chinese University of Hong KongHong Kong, China; Shenzhen Research Institute, The Chinese University of Hong KongShenzhen, China.
Winnie C W
WC
Chu
Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong, China.
Vincent C T
VC
Mok
Department of Imaging and Interventional Radiology, The Chinese University of Hong KongHong Kong, China; Shenzhen Research Institute, The Chinese University of Hong KongShenzhen, China; Research Center for Medical Image Computing, The Chinese University of Hong KongHong Kong, China.
Defeng
D
Wang
Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, The Chinese University of Hong KongHong Kong, China; Chow Yuk Ho Technology Centre for Innovative Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong KongHong Kong, China.
Lin
L
Shi
brain cortex; diffusion tensor imaging; schizophrenia; schizotypal personality disorder; tractography