This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing theresources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject andinvestigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source,and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed isfor the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator.People with schizophrenia exhibit complex and diffuse differences in brain morphology compared to nonpsychiatric controls. These neuroanatomical anomalies are revealed by evidence from postmortem and in vivo imaging studies (Lieberman et al. 1992; Harvey et al. 1992). Experimental findings however often lack consistency and fail to expose patterns and relationships of morphometric abnormality extending within and across schizophrenia subtypes. In fact, morphometric differences reported in schizophrenic populations appear to be as variable as symptomatology. Such patient heterogeneity and the subtly of morphological changes are primary confounds in interpreting the nature of structural differences occurring within a typical schizophrenic brain. Improvements in methodology applied to MR images however now provide a more comprehensive means to analyze patterns and relationships of neuroanatomical variation within schizophrenia groups and their deviation from normal. Such methods dev eloped by the Resource provide probability and deformational maps of structural anatomy within and across groups producing maps of subtle neuroanatomic variability. Along with standard quantitative morphometric measures these sensitive new techniques may finally generate clear hypotheses concerning the etiology and pathogenesis of the disease
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