Amygdala volume is reduced in early course schizophrenia

Rich, Alyson M.; Cho, Youngsun; Tang, Yanqing; Savić, Aleksandar; Krystal, John H.; Wang, Fei; Antičević, Alan

doi:10.1016/j.pscychresns.2016.02.006

Cited by 39 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 117 publications

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“…Interestingly, antipsychotic-naive patients show more pronounced volume reductions in the caudate nucleus and the thalamus [Haijma et al, 2013], playing key roles in language processing [Murphy, 2015]. Finally, the amygdala volume is also usually reduced in schizophrenics Okada et al, 2016;Rich et al, 2016].…”

Section: Brain Anomalies and Dysfunctionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Schizophrenia and Human Self-Domestication: An Evolutionary Linguistics Approach

et al. 2017

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Schizophrenia (SZ) is a pervasive neurodevelopmental disorder that entails social and cognitive deficits, including marked language problems. Its complex multifactorial etiopathogenesis, including genetic and environmental factors, is still widely uncertain. SZ incidence has always been high and quite stable in human populations, across time and regardless of cultural implications, for unclear reasons. It has been hypothesized that SZ pathophysiology may involve the biological components that changed during the recent human evolutionary history, and led to our distinctive mode of cognition, which includes language skills. In this paper we explore this hypothesis, focusing on the self-domestication of the human species. This has been claimed to account for many human-specific distinctive traits, including aspects of our behavior and cognition, and to favor the emergence of complex languages through cultural evolution. The “domestication syndrome” in mammals comprises the constellation of traits exhibited by domesticated strains, seemingly resulting from the hypofunction of the neural crest. It is our intention to show that people with SZ exhibit more marked domesticated traits at the morphological, physiological, and behavioral levels. We also show that genes involved in domestication and neural crest development and function comprise nearly 20% of SZ candidates, most of which exhibit altered expression profiles in the brain of SZ patients, specifically in areas involved in language processing. Based on these observations, we conclude that SZ may represent an abnormal ontogenetic itinerary for the human faculty of language, resulting, at least in part, from changes in genes important for the domestication syndrome and primarily involving the neural crest.

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Section: Brain Anomalies and Dysfunctionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Schizophrenia and Human Self-Domestication: An Evolutionary Linguistics Approach

et al. 2017

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“…Additionally, there may be sex‐based differences in both amygdala volume and its phenotypic correlates in ASD (Schumann et al, ). Further, evidence suggests that amygdala volume abnormalities may be associated with other neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders, such as ADHD (Hoogman et al, ; Nickel et al, ) schizophrenia (van Erp et al, ; Rich et al, ), and fragile X syndrome (Hazlett et al, ). Amygdala volume in ASD has been related to the severity of social and communication deficits (Kim et al, ; Schumann et al, ), the ability to establish appropriate eye contact (Barnea‐Goraly et al, ), joint attention (Mosconi et al, ), and the severity of restricted and repetitive behaviours (Dziobek et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structural connectivity of the amygdala in young adults with autism spectrum disorder

Gibbard

Ren

Skuse

et al. 2017

Human Brain Mapping

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Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairments in social cognition, a function associated with the amygdala. Subdivisions of the amygdala have been identified which show specificity of structure, connectivity, and function. Little is known about amygdala connectivity in ASD. The aim of this study was to investigate the microstructural properties of amygdala—cortical connections and their association with ASD behaviours, and whether connectivity of specific amygdala subregions is associated with particular ASD traits. The brains of 51 high‐functioning young adults (25 with ASD; 26 controls) were scanned using MRI. Amygdala volume was measured, and amygdala—cortical connectivity estimated using probabilistic tractography. An iterative ‘winner takes all’ algorithm was used to parcellate the amygdala based on its primary cortical connections. Measures of amygdala connectivity were correlated with clinical scores. In comparison with controls, amygdala volume was greater in ASD (F(1,94) = 4.19; p = .04). In white matter (WM) tracts connecting the right amygdala to the right cortex, ASD subjects showed increased mean diffusivity (t = 2.35; p = .05), which correlated with the severity of emotion recognition deficits (rho = −0.53; p = .01). Following amygdala parcellation, in ASD subjects reduced fractional anisotropy in WM connecting the left amygdala to the temporal cortex was associated with with greater attention switching impairment (rho = −0.61; p = .02). This study demonstrates that both amygdala volume and the microstructure of connections between the amygdala and the cortex are altered in ASD. Findings indicate that the microstructure of right amygdala WM tracts are associated with overall ASD severity, but that investigation of amygdala subregions can identify more specific associations.

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“…Our findings support the hypothesis that the psychiatric symptoms induced psychological stress, subsequently induced the GMV reduction in some key brain regions, such as sgACC. [40,41].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Depressive symptom in the first-episode schizophrenic patients is related to the reduction of grey matter volume in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex - a pilot study

Xu¹,

He²,

Chen³

et al. 2018

Oncotarget

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Approximately 25-75% of patients with schizophrenia also present major depressive systems. Investigations into the pathological features associated with depressive symptoms in patients with schizophrenia would provide important information for the development of treatments for depressive symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. In present study, we enrolled 17 first-episode schizophrenic patients with depressive symptoms and 17 well-matched first-episode schizophrenic patients without depressive symptoms and compared differences in their grey mater volume (GMV) using voxel-based morphometry (VBM). We observed significantly decreased GMV in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) in the first episode schizophrenic patients with depressive symptoms compared to the first episode schizophrenic patients without depressive symptoms. However, we did not observe a correlation between the severity of the decreased GMV and the severity of depressive symptoms. Although convincing evidence supporting this postulation is lacking and requires further study for confirmation, to some extent, our findings provide indirect evidence for the suggestion that the reduction of the GMV in the sgACC may play a key role in the depressive symptoms in the first episode schizophrenic patients.

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Amygdala volume is reduced in early course schizophrenia

Cited by 39 publications

References 117 publications

Schizophrenia and Human Self-Domestication: An Evolutionary Linguistics Approach

Schizophrenia and Human Self-Domestication: An Evolutionary Linguistics Approach

Structural connectivity of the amygdala in young adults with autism spectrum disorder

Depressive symptom in the first-episode schizophrenic patients is related to the reduction of grey matter volume in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex - a pilot study

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