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Patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) experience psychological distress because of excessive and uncontrollable anxiety in everyday life. Only a few morphological studies have so far focused on specific brain regions of interest as well as the gray matter volume changes in GAD patients. This study evaluated gray matter volume alterations in whole-brain areas between GAD patients and healthy controls, and sex differences between the specific brain areas with significant volume changes in GAD patients using voxel-based morphometry. Twenty-two patients with GAD (13 men and nine women), who were diagnosed using the DSM-IV-TR, and 22 age-matched healthy controls (13 men and nine women) participated in this study. The high-resolution MRI data were processed using voxel-based morphometry analysis on the basis of diffeomorphic anatomical registration through an exponentiated Lie algebra algorithm in Statistical Parametric Mapping 8. There was no significant difference in the total intracranial volume between GAD patients and controls, but a significant difference was observed between sexes (P<0.05). Patients with GAD showed significant volume reductions in the hippocampus, midbrain, thalamus, insula, and superior temporal gyrus compared with the controls. As for the sex comparison, female patients showed a significant increase in the volume of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex relative to male patients. Also, the volume of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in female patients was correlated positively with the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale score (γ=0.68, P=0.04). The specific morphological variations in patient with GAD will be helpful to understand the neural mechanism associated with a symptom of GAD. Furthermore, the findings would be valuable for the diagnostic accuracy of GAD using morphometric MRI analysis.

Background Investigation of the effect of sex hormones on the brain volume in women provides a unique opportunity to examine menopause-related morphometric alterations. Aim To evaluate brain morphological alterations in post-menopausal women using voxel-based morphometry and its correlations with sex hormone levels. Methods 20 Pre-menopausal women and 20 post-menopausal women underwent structural MRI. Outcomes T1-weighted magnetic resonance data were acquired and serum sex hormones including total estrogen, estriol, estradiol (E2), follicle-stimulating hormone, free testosterone, SHBG, and luteinizing hormone were measured. Results Post-menopausal women showed decreased gray matter (GM) in the supplementary motor area (SMA), inferior frontal gyrus, olfactory cortex, and superior temporal gyrus as contrasted with pre-menopausal women using analysis of covariance (P &lt; .05). The GM volume (GMV) values of the SMA, inferior frontal gyrus, and superior temporal gyrus were positively correlated with the levels of E2 in the pre-menopausal and post-menopausal women, in which the volume of the SMA was negatively correlated with the duration of time after menopause in post-menopausal women. Clinical Translation This finding is potentially applicable to assess the brain dysfunction with morphological changes in post-menopausal women. Conclusions Our study is the first to evaluate a direct relationship between the level of E2 and GMV change. We directly compared pre-menopausal and menopausal women un-matched in age. This study highlights the menopause-related morphological alterations in post-menopausal women, suggesting that the reduced GMV were closely associated with the symptoms of menopause caused by the decreased levels of E2.

ObjectiveBy using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique we assessed brain activation patterns while subjects were viewing the living environments representing natural and urban scenery.Materials and MethodsA total of 28 healthy right-handed subjects underwent an fMRI on a 3.0 Tesla MRI scanner. The stimulation paradigm consisted of three times the rest condition and two times the activation condition, each of which lasted for 30 and 120 seconds, respectively. During the activation period, each subject viewed natural and urban scenery, respectively.ResultsThe predominant brain activation areas observed following exposure to natural scenic views in contrast with urban views included the superior and middle frontal gyri, superior parietal gyrus, precuneus, basal ganglia, superior occipital gyrus, anterior cingulate gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, and insula. On the other hand, the predominant brain activation areas following exposure to urban scenic views in contrast with natural scenes included the middle and inferior occipital gyri, parahippocampal gyrus, hippocampus, amygdala, anterior temporal pole, and inferior frontal gyrus.ConclusionOur findings support the idea that the differential functional neuroanatomies for each scenic view are presumably related with subjects' emotional responses to the natural and urban environment, and thus the differential functional neuroanatomy can be utilized as a neural index for the evaluation of friendliness in ecological housing.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM) volume alterations in whole-brain structures in patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls using voxel-based morphometry (VBM), and further to assess the correlation between GM and WM volume variations and symptom severity in schizophrenia. A total of 22 patients with schizophrenia and 22 age-matched healthy controls participated. Magnetic resonance image data were processed using SPM8 software with diffeomorphic anatomical registration via an exponentiated Lie algebra (DARTEL) algorithm. Patients with schizophrenia exhibited significantly decreased GM volumes of the insula, superior temporal gyrus (STG), gyrus rectus, and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) compared with healthy controls. The GM volumes of the STG and gyrus rectus were negatively correlated with the positive scales on the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and those of the STG and ACC were negatively correlated with the negative scales. The durations of illness in schizophrenia were negatively correlated with the GM volumes of the insula, STG, and ACC. Patients with schizophrenia exhibited significantly decreased WM volumes of the superior frontal gyrus, inferior temporal gyrus, and STG. The WM volumes of the STG were negatively correlated with the duration of illness. Our findings suggest that GM and WM volume abnormalities in the STG are associated with the psychopathology of schizophrenia.

Few studies have assessed the neural mechanisms of the effects of emotion on cognition in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) patients. In this functional MRI (fMRI), we investigated the effects of emotional interference on working memory (WM) maintenance in GAD patients. Fifteen patients with GAD participated in this study. Event-related fMRI data were obtained while the participants performed a WM task (face recognition) with neutral and anxiety-provoking distracters. The GAD patients showed impaired performance in WM task during emotional distracters and showed greater activation on brain regions such as DLPFC, VLPFC, amygdala, hippocampus which are responsible for the active maintenance of goal relevant information in WM and emotional processing. Although our results are not conclusive, our finding cautiously suggests the cognitive-affective interaction in GAD patients which shown interfering effect of emotional distracters on WM maintenance.

The aim of this study was to reveal a potential effect of emotion on cognitive control in the implicit memory task with emotionally neutral and unpleasant words in healthy controls and patients with schizophrenia using a 3.0 T functional MRI (fMRI). A total of 15 patients with schizophrenia and 15 healthy controls underwent the fMRI. fMRI data were obtained while the participants performed the implicit memory tasks with emotionally neutral and unpleasant words. During the implicit memory retrieval with emotionally neutral words, the predominant activation areas observed in patients in contrast to healthy controls included the precuneus, superior parietal gyrus, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). In the implicit memory retrieval with unpleasant words, patients with schizophrenia showed dominant activities in the superior and middle temporal gyri, fusiform gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, postcentral gyrus, occipital gyrus, lingual gyrus, parahippocampal gyrus, amygdala, and insula as well as precuneus, superior parietal gyrus, and dlPFC. Blood-oxygen-level-dependent signal changes in the dlPFC were correlated positively with the scores of the negative symptoms under the PANSS during implicit memory retrieval with unpleasant words in patients with schizophrenia. These findings would be useful to understand the neural mechanisms related to general impairment of cognitive and emotional functions commonly observed in schizophrenia.

This study utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to discriminate brain activation patterns associated with the effect of distraction during working memory (WM) maintenance for human faces in healthy controls and patients with schizophrenia. Event-related fMRI data were obtained while the subjects performed WM maintenance in a delayed-response WM task with task-irrelevant distracters. Compared with healthy controls, patients showed significantly decreased activities in the superior frontal gyrus, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, inferior parietal gyrus, and fusiform gyrus during the delayed-response WM task with human face distracters. The blood-oxygen-level-dependent signal changes in the DLPFC were negatively correlated with both of the scores of the Positive Subscale and General Psychopathology Subscale under the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale during the WM maintenance for the human faces in the patients. This study will be helpful in understanding the neural mechanisms in the general impairment of the inhibition control in schizophrenia.