Selective disrupted gray matter volume covariance of amygdala subregions in schizophrenia

TL;DR

This study finds that specific parts of the amygdala show abnormal volume connections in schizophrenia patients compared to healthy individuals.

Contribution

The first large-scale investigation of disrupted gray matter volume covariance in amygdala subregions in schizophrenia.

Findings

Five amygdala subregions showed increased GMV covariance with brain regions like the hippocampus and striatum in schizophrenia patients.

The altered GMV covariance patterns were selectively observed and replicated across most centers.

No significant correlations were found between the GMV covariance changes and clinical symptoms or medication use.

Abstract

Although extensive structural and functional abnormalities have been reported in schizophrenia, the gray matter volume (GMV) covariance of the amygdala remain unknown. The amygdala contains several subregions with different connection patterns and functions, but it is unclear whether the GMV covariance of these subregions are selectively affected in schizophrenia.

To address this issue, we compared the GMV covariance of each amygdala subregion between 807 schizophrenia patients and 845 healthy controls from 11 centers. The amygdala was segmented into nine subregions using FreeSurfer (v7.1.1), including the lateral (La), basal (Ba), accessory-basal (AB), anterior-amygdaloid-area (AAA), central (Ce), medial (Me), cortical (Co), corticoamygdaloid-transition (CAT), and paralaminar (PL) nucleus. We developed an operational combat harmonization model for 11 centers, subsequently employing a voxel-wise general linear model to investigate the differences in GMV covariance between schizophrenia patients and healthy controls across these subregions and the entire brain, while adjusting for age, sex and TIV.

Our findings revealed that five amygdala subregions of schizophrenia patients, including bilateral AAA, CAT, and right Ba, demonstrated significantly increased GMV covariance with the hippocampus, striatum, orbitofrontal cortex, and so on (permutation test, P< 0.05, corrected). These findings could be replicated in most centers. Rigorous correlation analysis failed to identify relationships between the altered GMV covariance with positive and negative symptom scale, duration of illness, and antipsychotic medication measure.

Our research is the first to discover selectively impaired GMV covariance patterns of amygdala subregion in a large multicenter sample size of patients with schizophrenia.

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