The main goal of this research is to determine if certain, frequently implicated areas of brain abnormality in the pathology of schizophrenia are significantly smaller and have significantly different Tl and T2 values than age, sex, race, and education matched normal volunteers and patients with psychotic depression. The brain areas chosen for measurement include frontal, temporal, areas mediating eye movements and deep midline structures which will be envisaged by nuclear magnetic resonance techniques on a 1.5 Tesla imager. Validation variables will include descriptions of length and severity of illness, premorbid adjustment, high school grades, lifetime neuroleptic dosage, positive and negative symptoms. Scores will be derived from a structured neurological examination and neuropsychological tests, including the Halstead- Reitan Battery, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, the Wisconsin Card Sort, and a complete battery of eye movement tests. Major hypotheses include: 1. In comparison to normal volunteers, schizophrenic patients will have significantly smaller means of one or more of the brain structures measured, smaller amounts of gray or white matter, more abnormal eye movements, more signs from the neurological and neuropsychological evaluation that indicate brain pathology; 2. Schizophrenic patients with abnormal eye movements and more neurological signs will have significantly smaller brain areas than patients with normal scores. Because Tl and T2 relaxation times have been virtually unstudied in schizophrenia, no prediction of the direction of the findings can be made. Tl and T2 are related to the metabolism of water and fat with current imagers which use data from the hydrogen ion mainly. Results of this five year study using 100 schizophrenic, 100 normal, and 50 depressed subjects should help open increasingly focussed avenues of biological research in schizophrenia.
| DeMyer, M K; Gilmor, R L; Hendrie, H C et al. (1988) Magnetic resonance brain images in schizophrenic and normal subjects: influence of diagnosis and education. Schizophr Bull 14:21-37 |
