Abstract
BackgroundThis paper summarizes the findings of a long term study addressing the question of how several brain volume measure are related to three major mental illnesses in a Colorado subject group. It reports results obtained from a large N, collected and analyzed by the same laboratory over a multiyear period, with visually guided MRI segmentation being the primary initial analytic tool.MethodsIntracerebral volume (ICV), total brain volume (TBV), ventricular volume (VV), ventricular/brain ratio (VBR), and TBV/ICV ratios were calculated from a total of 224 subject MRIs collected over a period of 13 years. Subject groups included controls (C, N = 89), and patients with schizophrenia (SZ, N = 58), bipolar disorder (BD, N = 51), and schizoaffective disorder (SAD, N = 26).ResultsICV, TBV, and VV measures compared favorably with values obtained by other research groups, but in this study did not differ significantly between groups. TBV/ICV ratios were significantly decreased, and VBR increased, in the SZ and BD groups compared to the C group. The SAD group did not differ from C on any measure.ConclusionsIn this study TBV/ICV and VBR ratios separated SZ and BD patients from controls. Of interest however, SAD patients did not differ from controls on these measures. The findings suggest that the gross measure of TBV may not reliably differ in the major mental illnesses to a degree useful in diagnosis, likely due to the intrinsic variability of the measures in question; the differences in VBR appear more robust across studies. Differences in some of these findings compared to earlier reports from several laboratories finding significant differences between groups in VV and TBV may relate to phenomenological drift, differences in analytic techniques, and possibly the "file drawer problem".
Highlights
This paper summarizes the findings of a long term study addressing the question of how several brain volume measure are related to three major mental illnesses in a Colorado subject group
This paper addresses differences in several measures of brain and ventricle volume and brain/intracranial volume ratio in three major Axis I mental disorders including schizophrenia (SZ), schizoaffective disorder (SAD), and bipolar disorder (BD), based upon magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain obtained from 224 subjects over a period of 13 years in the same laboratory
Patient subjects of any race between the age of 18 and 58 that met the DSM-IV criteria for BD, SAD or SZ that were without the presence of a current or recent diagnosis of alcohol or substance abuse/dependence, had no history of a neurological disorder, or current major medical illness were eligible for the study
Summary
This paper summarizes the findings of a long term study addressing the question of how several brain volume measure are related to three major mental illnesses in a Colorado subject group It reports results obtained from a large N, collected and analyzed by the same laboratory over a multiyear period, with visually guided MRI segmentation being the primary initial analytic tool. Abnormalities in the earliest studies in patients with dementia and the organic psychoses, led Moore et al suggested in 1935 that if similar changes could be demonstrated in patients with the so-called “functional psychoses” it would imply disturbances in brain function underlying these disorders [2] These authors reported PEG result in 71 patients with schizophrenia and 46 patients with manic depressive psychosis. The early PEG studies were complicated by relative lack of diagnostic clarity, absence of controls, and the fact that patient populations were most often chronically hospitalized and frequently demented individuals with many co morbidities, as well as poor resolution and difficulty quantifying the imaging data
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