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Gray Matter Reduced in Patients With Early-Onset Psychosis
Patients with early-onset psychosis had significantly lower volume of gray matter in their brains compared with healthy control subjects, according to study findings published in Molecular Psychiatry.
“Gray matter’s primary purpose is to process information in the brain and plays a significant role in day-to-day functions like memory, emotions, and movement,” said study corresponding author Shuqing Si, a PhD student from the King’s College London Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience in England.
“This study used specially created software--ENIGMA-VBM—developed at King’s that can accurately map where there have been local increases and decreases in brain volume. It’s allowed our team to process significantly more data and has meant that our sample reflects brain scans from many parts of the world.”
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The study included brain scans of 482 patients diagnosed with psychosis before age 18 and 469 healthy controls from 15 independent cohorts in Norway, Spain, Canada, Italy, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Using ENIGMA-VBM software, researchers conducted a whole brain voxel-based morphometry analysis of the scans.
Early-onset psychosis was associated with widespread reductions in cortical gray matter volume and, to a lesser extent, small clusters of reduced white matter, according to the study. Volumes of gray matter were lower in almost all regions of the brain compared with healthy controls, with the most pronounced effect in the left median cingulate. In fact, no regional gray or white matter volumes were higher in patients with early-onset psychosis.
Patients who developed early-onset psychosis at later ages had lower volumes of gray matter in a number of small brain regions compared with patients with earlier onset, the study found. Additionally, higher doses of antipsychotic medication were associated with lower volumes of gray matter in the frontal and temporal cortex.
“This study, the largest neuroimaging analysis of early-onset psychosis to date, used newly developed technologies to combine scans from different sites to examine hundreds of thousands of data points measuring volume in the brain,” said study senior author Matthew Kempton, PhD, King’s College London Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience. “… This detailed map will hopefully provide the basis for future research, as it could help as a diagnostic tool, and even track the effectiveness of treatments.”
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