Abnormalities in connectivity of white-matter tracts in patients with familial and non-familial schizophrenia

Abstract

Overall, these findings support the hypothesis that loss of WM integrity may be an important pathophysiological feature of schizophrenia, with particular implications for brain dysmaturation in non-familial and familial schizophrenia.

Myelin, myelin-related disorders, and psychosis

“…Thirty of the 68 patients in this study were neuroleptic-naïve at the time of DTI, and the remaining 38 patients were on low dose antipsychotics at least 3 days prior to MRI scanning. There are no significant differences in FA values between the neuroleptic-naïve patients and patients on medication (Wang et al, 2011). DTI reports offer additional support to neuropsychology, and volumetric and functional neuroimaging studies that have implicated frontal and temporal lobe abnormalities in schizophrenia.…”

“…The authors concluded that there were abnormalities in the fronto-limbic circuitry at the earliest clinical stages of schizophrenia (Yao et al, 2013). Wang et al (2011) also reported FA deficits in the right corpus callosum as well as the left temporal lobe of schizophrenia patients. Thirty of the 68 patients in this study were neuroleptic-naïve at the time of DTI, and the remaining 38 patients were on low dose antipsychotics at least 3 days prior to MRI scanning.…”

White-matter microstructure in previously drug-naive patients with schizophrenia after 6 weeks of treatment

“…It has been suggested that the pathophysiology of schizophrenia may lie in abnormal interactions or dysconnectivity across a distributed network of brain regions (Stephan et al 2006;Segal et al 2007). Consistent with this, cross-sectional studies have shown the presence of structural brain abnormalities in the early phase of schizophrenic illness (Federspiel et al 2006;Kanaan et al 2006;Peters et al 2010;Wang et al 2011), although several studies failed to detect structural brain anomalies in early-episode patients (Moncrieff & Leo, 2010). More extensive structural brain abnormalities were found in chronic patients with schizophrenia, which may reflect the progressive nature of this condition .…”

Clemastine rescues behavioral changes and enhances remyelination in the cuprizone mouse model of demyelination

“…As an essential component of the plasticity of neuronal circuits, myelin sheaths insulate and propagate electrical signals rapidly along axons [7] . More importantly, properly myelinated nerve fibers allow precise and accurate information to fl ow within and between neuronal circuits [3,8,9] . A number of imaging studies have shown that the white matter volume of schizophrenic brains is lower than in healthy controls, suggesting that myelin sheath damage or demyelination is involved in the schizophrenic brain [10][11][12][13][14][15] .…”