Global Brain Asymmetry is Increased in Schizophrenia and Related to Avolition

Overview

Journal Acta Psychiatr Scand

Specialty Psychiatry

Date 2017 Mar 24

PMID 28332705

Citations 14

Authors

C Nunez

N Paipa

C Senior

M Coromina

S Siddi

S Ochoa

G Brebion

C Stephan-Otto

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Objective: Schizophrenia may be the result of a failure of the normal lateralization process of the brain. However, whole-brain asymmetry has not been assessed up to date. Here, we propose a novel measure of global brain asymmetry based on the Dice coefficient to quantify similarity between brain hemispheres.

Method: Global gray and white matter asymmetry was calculated from high-resolution T1 structural images acquired from 24 patients with schizophrenia and 26 healthy controls, age- and sex-matched. Some of the analyses were replicated in a much larger sample (n = 759) obtained from open-access online databases.

Results: Patients with schizophrenia had more global gray matter asymmetry than controls. Additionally, increased gray matter asymmetry was associated with avolition, whereas the inverse relationship was found for anxiety at a trend level. These analyses were replicated in a larger sample and confirmed previous results.

Conclusion: Our findings suggest that global gray matter asymmetry is related to the concept of developmental stability and is a useful indicator of perturbations during neurodevelopment.

Citing Articles

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Epigenome Defines Aberrant Brain Laterality in Major Mental Illnesses.

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A multiscale characterization of cortical shape asymmetries in early psychosis.

Chen Y, Tiego J, Segal A, Chopra S, Holmes A, Suo C Brain Commun. 2024; 6(1):fcae015.

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Brain Hemispheric Asymmetry in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder.

Pinto D, Martins R, Macedo A, Branco M, Duarte J, Madeira N J Clin Med. 2023; 12(10).

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High-Frequency Transcranial Random Noise Stimulation over the Left Prefrontal Cortex Increases Resting-State EEG Frontal Alpha Asymmetry in Patients with Schizophrenia.

Yeh T, Huang C, Chung Y, Im J, Lin Y, Ma C J Pers Med. 2022; 12(10).

PMID: 36294806 PMC: 9604798. DOI: 10.3390/jpm12101667.

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