Anatomical connectivity in early onset schizophrenia
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: Clinical Neurology
Abstract
This project looks at brain changes in adolescents with schizophrenia using new and advanced MRI techniques.
Schizophrenia is a major mental illness affecting up to 1% of the population. Often young people are affected. As yet we are uncertain of the causes, although genes and the brain are directly involved. We know that there are changes in a number of areas in the brain, and it is highly likely that the connections or nerve tracts between these brain areas are also abnormal. With MRI we can accurately map these nerve tracts and show how they connect to certain brain regions, particularly those involving speech and language.
We aim to study schizophrenia in adolescence – an age when the brain is still developing. By comparing teenagers with schizophrenia to healthy adolescents, we hope to gather important information on how schizophrenia affects brain development during the vital period of adolescence. If we can understand which nerve tracts and brain regions are abnormal, and relate this to symptoms, we will be in a better position to develop targeted drug treatments.
Schizophrenia is a major mental illness affecting up to 1% of the population. Often young people are affected. As yet we are uncertain of the causes, although genes and the brain are directly involved. We know that there are changes in a number of areas in the brain, and it is highly likely that the connections or nerve tracts between these brain areas are also abnormal. With MRI we can accurately map these nerve tracts and show how they connect to certain brain regions, particularly those involving speech and language.
We aim to study schizophrenia in adolescence – an age when the brain is still developing. By comparing teenagers with schizophrenia to healthy adolescents, we hope to gather important information on how schizophrenia affects brain development during the vital period of adolescence. If we can understand which nerve tracts and brain regions are abnormal, and relate this to symptoms, we will be in a better position to develop targeted drug treatments.
Technical Summary
There is accumulating evidence that the cognitive and sensory abnormalities in schizophrenia are related to dysfunction in networks linking the thalamus and the frontal temporal lobes and cerebellum. Diffusion Tensor Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DTI) provides a way of assessing macro-connectivity reflected in white matter projection pathways between these areas . Our pilot study has shown locally reduced FA in the middle temporal gyral region. This project will use voxel-wise measures of anisotropy of white matter (fractional anisotropy, FA) and related methods to distinguish differences in white matter organisation between patients with adolescent onset schizophrenia and age- and sex-matched controls. A new, method of probabilistic tractography now well-validated by our group will be applied to define FA changes specifically in thalamo-frontal, frontal cerebellar and temporal white matter pathways. Study of the early-onset group with a likely neurodevelopmental aetiology will shed light on the crucial aspects of the interaction of the schizophrenic illness and cortical development, which undergoes major reorganisation during adolescence.