Abstract
BackgroundBrain anatomical deficits associated with cognitive dysfunction have been reported in patients with schizophrenia. However, it remains unknown whether such anatomical deficits exist in individuals with prodromal psychosis. The present study is designed to investigate anatomical deficits in prodromal individuals and their associations with clinical/cognitive features.MethodsSeventy‐four prodromal individuals and seventy‐six healthy controls were scanned using structural magnetic resonance imaging. Support vector machines were applied to test whether anatomical deficits might be used to discriminate prodromal individuals from healthy controls.ResultsProdromal individuals showed significantly increased gray matter volume (GMV) in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and right rectus gyrus relative to healthy controls. No correlations were observed between increased GMV and clinical/cognitive characteristics. The combination of increased GMV in the right rectus gyrus and right IFG showed a sensitivity of 74.32%, a specificity of 67.11%, and an accuracy of 70.67% in differentiating prodromal individuals from healthy controls.ConclusionOur results provide evidence of increased frontal GMV in prodromal individuals. A combination of GMV values in the two frontal brain areas may serve as potential markers to discriminate prodromal individuals from healthy controls. The results thus highlight the importance of the frontal regions in the pathophysiology of psychosis.
Highlights
Individuals with prodromal psychosis, along with various cognitive deficits, such as execu‐ tive functions, processing speed, working memory, and attention,[1,2] are known to be on the pre‐onset stage of psychosis and show potentially prodromal psychotic symptoms, which may progress to full‐blown psychosis.[3]
By analyzing the whole brain gray matter volume (GMV) with CAT12, prodromal individuals showed significantly increased GMV in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and right rectus gyrus compared with healthy controls
The support vector machine (SVM) analysis showed that a combination of the GMV values in these two brain regions might be a potential marker to distinguish prodromal individuals from controls
Summary
SVM has emerged as a promising tool for diagnostic purpose of various neuropsychiatric conditions.[16] Previous SVM results showed that the classification pattern included the prefrontal and temporal cortices, as well as a large bilateral cluster containing the parahippocampus and hippo‐ campus where GMV reductions were recognized in the prodromal individuals.[17,18] SVM could successfully discriminate prodromal in‐ dividuals from healthy controls with an accuracy of 68.42% based on structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and diffusion tensor neuroimaging parameters.[19] Zarogianni et al[20] reported an accuracy of 74% for predicting later onset of psychosis, and the discrimina‐ tive neuroanatomical pattern included many brain areas such as the temporal, frontal, and parietal regions. We hypothesized that decreased GMV would be significantly cor‐ related with clinical/cognitive features
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