Brain structural correlates of schizotypy and psychosis proneness in a non-clinical healthy volunteer sample

Abstract

Schizotypal traits are phenotypic risk factors for schizophrenia, associated with biological changes across a putative schizophrenia spectrum. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that brain structural changes in key brain areas relevant to this spectrum (esp. medial and lateral prefrontal cortex) would vary across different degrees of schizotypal trait expression and/or phenotypic markers of psychosis proneness in healthy non-clinical volunteers. We analysed high-resolution 3Tesla magnetic resonance images (MRI) of 59 healthy volunteers using voxel-based morphometry (VBM), correlating grey matter values to the positive and negative symptom factors of the schizotypal personality questionnaire (SPQ, German version) and a measure of psychosis proneness (community assessment of psychic experiences, CAPE). We found positive correlations between positive SPQ dimension and bilateral inferior and right superior frontal cortices, and positive CAPE dimension and left inferior frontal cortex, as well as CAPE negative dimension and right supplementary motor area (SMA) and left inferior parietal cortex. However, only the positive correlation of the right precuneus with negative schizotypy scores was significant after FWE correction for multiple comparisons. Our findings confirm an effect of schizotypal traits and psychosis proneness on brain structure in healthy subjects, providing further support to a biological continuum model.