Aberrant Gray Matter Volume and Cortical Surface in Paranoid-Type Delusional Disorder

Abstract

Introduction: Delusions are core symptoms of schizophrenia-spectrum and related disorders. Despite their clinical relevance, the neural correlates underlying such phenomena are unclear. Recent research suggests that specific delusional content may be associated with distinct neural substrates. Objective: Here, we used structural magnetic resonance imaging to investigate multiple parameters of brain morphology in patients presenting with paranoid type delusional disorder (pt-DD, n = 14) compared to those of healthy controls (HC, n = 25). Methods: Voxel-and surface-based morphometry for structural data was used to investigate gray matter volume (GMV), cortical thickness (CT) and gyrification. Re-sults: Compared to HC, patients with pt-DD showed reduced GMV in bilateral amygdala and right inferior frontal gyrus. Higher GMV in patients was found in bilateral orbitofrontal and in left superior frontal cortices. Patients also had lower CT in frontal and temporal regions. Abnormal gyrification in patients was evident in frontal and temporal areas, as well as in bilateral insula. Conclusions: The data suggest the presence of aberrant GMV in a right prefrontal region associated with belief evaluation, as well as distinct structural abnormalities in areas that essentially subserve processing of fear, anxiety and threat in patients with pt-DD. It is possible that cortical features of distinct evolutionary and genetic origin, i.e. CT and gyrification, contribute differently to the pathogenesis of pt-DD.

Limbic links to paranoia: increased resting-state functional connectivity between amygdala, hippocampus and orbitofrontal cortex in schizophrenia patients with paranoia

“…In fact, in schizophrenia patients with psychomotor inhibition, we found reduced grey matter volume and increased resting-state perfusion in the supplementary motor area across samples, who in turn demonstrated increased rs-fc and structural connectivity with other motor areas of the brain [71][72][73][74][75]. The brain alterations in patients with paranoia follow a similar pattern: reduced grey matter volumes in amygdala and ventral striatum [13,76], increased restingstate perfusion of the amygdala [14,15], and increased rs-fc within a limbic network. Thus, specific alterations of cerebral circuit physiology may give rise to distinct symptoms in psychosis.…”

Surface values, volumetric measurements and radiomics of structural MRI for the diagnosis and subtyping of attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder

“…The sqrtsulc is defined as the square root‐transformed sulcus depth based on the Euclidean distance between the central surface and its convex hull (Gaser & Dahnke, 2016). A previous study reported that the top discriminative features for ADHD were in cortical areas (Sun et al, 2018), and the surface values were associated with multiple brain diseases (Al‐Radaideh et al, 2019; Madeira et al, 2020; Wolf et al, 2020; Zheng et al, 2019). The discriminative ability of the four surface values for the diagnosis of ADHD has not been investigated until now.…”

Cortical surface variation in individuals with excessive smartphone use

“…The present study expands research on SPA (Horvath et al., 2020; Schmitgen et al., 2020) by addressing two major objectives: First, we sought to investigate two structural markers of cortical development that have distinct evolutionary and genetic origins in SPA and n‐SPA individuals: complexity of cortical folding (CCF) and cortical thickness (CTh). CTh is a dynamic parameter that undergoes postpartum changes with nonlinear trajectories of development often being modulated by environmental stimuli (Hirjak et al., 2016; Wierenga et al., 2014; R. C. Wolf et al., 2020). In contrast, CCF is a stable marker of neurodevelopmental process, as it becomes manifest at weeks 10–16 of gestation and undergoes only minor changes after the third trimester (Armstrong et al., 1995; Hirjak et al., 2016; N. D. Wolf et al., 2020).…”