Abstract
An increased prevalence of duplicated Heschl’s gyrus (HG), which may reflect an early neurodevelopmental pathology, has been reported in schizophrenia (Sz). However, it currently remains unclear whether individuals at risk of psychosis exhibit similar brain morphological characteristics. This magnetic resonance imaging study investigated the distribution of HG gyrification patterns [i.e., single HG, common stem duplication (CSD), and complete posterior duplication (CPD)] and their relationship with clinical characteristics in 57 individuals with an at-risk mental state (ARMS) [of whom 5 (8.8%) later developed Sz], 63 patients with Sz, and 61 healthy comparisons. The prevalence of duplicated HG patterns (i.e., CSD or CPD) bilaterally was significantly higher in the ARMS and Sz groups than in the controls, whereas no significant differences were observed in HG patterns between these groups. The left CSD pattern, particularly in the Sz group, was associated with a verbal fluency deficit. In the ARMS group, left CSD pattern was related to a more severe general psychopathology. The present results suggest that an altered gyrification pattern on the superior temporal plane reflects vulnerability factors associated with Sz, which may also contribute to the clinical features of high-risk individuals, even without the onset of psychosis.
Highlights
Heschl’s gyrus (HG), a convolution on the superior temporal plane, hosts the primary auditory cortex (Rademacher et al, 1993; Da Costa et al, 2011) and is involved in memory (Weinberger, 2015) and emotional (Concina et al, 2019) processing
When we examined participants with HG duplication only, no group difference was noted in HG patterns (CSD vs. complete posterior duplication (CPD); all χ2 < 1.82, p > 0.177)
Since we demonstrated increased HG duplication in Sz regardless of the subtype (i.e., common stem duplication (CSD) or CPD), the Sz group examined by Hubl et al (2010) must have had a higher prevalence of the duplicated HG pattern according to the traditional HG pattern definition [single vs. duplicated (CSD or CPD) (Leonard et al, 1998; Rademacher et al, 2001; Abdul-Kareem and Sluming, 2008; Marie et al, 2015)]
Summary
Heschl’s gyrus (HG), a convolution on the superior temporal plane, hosts the primary auditory cortex (Rademacher et al, 1993; Da Costa et al, 2011) and is involved in memory (Weinberger, 2015) and emotional (Concina et al, 2019) processing. In a recent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study, we reported an increased prevalence of HG duplications in first-episode schizophrenia (Sz) (Takahashi et al, in submission), which may reflect the early neurodevelopmental pathology (Weinberger, 1987; Insel, 2010) Since another MRI study that examined HG duplication patterns in chronic Sz did not find significant results (Hubl et al, 2010), it currently remains unclear whether illness stages affect the HG pattern of Sz. structural/functional abnormalities in the superior temporal plane may underlie the positive psychotic symptoms (AldersonDay et al, 2015; Takahashi and Suzuki, 2018) as well as core trait abnormalities [e.g., deficits in social cognition (Mier et al, 2017) and verbal fluency (Antonova et al, 2004)] of Sz, it has not yet been clarified whether the HG gyrification pattern is associated with these clinical features
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