Multiparametric mapping of white matter microstructure in catatonia

Abstract

Catatonia is characterized by motor, affective and behavioral abnormalities. To date, the specific role of white matter (WM) abnormalities in schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) patients with catatonia is largely unknown. In this study, diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) data were collected from 111 right-handed SSD patients and 28 healthy controls. Catatonic symptoms were examined on the Northoff Catatonia Rating Scale (NCRS). We used whole-brain tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS), tractometry (along tract statistics using TractSeg) and graph analytics (clustering coefficient-CCO, local betweenness centrality-BC) to provide a framework of specific WM microstructural abnormalities underlying catatonia in SSD. Following a categorical approach, post hoc analyses showed differences in fractional anisotrophy (FA) measured via tractometry in the corpus callosum, corticospinal tract and thalamo-premotor tract as well as increased CCO as derived by graph analytics of the right superior parietal cortex (SPC) and left caudate nucleus in catatonic patients (NCRS total score ≥ 3; n = 30) when compared to non-catatonic patients (NCRS total score = 0; n = 29). In catatonic patients according to DSM-IV-TR (n = 43), catatonic symptoms were associated with FA variations (tractometry) of the left corticospinal tract and CCO of the left orbitofrontal cortex, primary motor cortex, supplementary motor area and putamen. This study supports the notion that structural reorganization of WM bundles connecting orbitofrontal/ parietal, thalamic and striatal regions contribute to catatonia in SSD patients.

A Large-Scale Investigation of White Matter Microstructural Associations with Reading Ability

“…VBA can still be valuable as a data exploratory tool, but tract-based methods likely provide for superior sensitivity and reduced ambiguity of fiber bundle localization . These benefits have already been observed in multiple clinical populations (Kamagata et al, 2013;Kuchling et al, 2018;Wasserthal et al, 2020;Forkel et al, 2021).…”

“…To make each tract, we fed the FOD peaks into TractSeg to create binary masks of the tract, the ROIs that define its endpoint, and a corresponding tracking output map (TOM) [Wasserthal et al, 2018b]. These were used as inputs to a pre-trained convolutional neural network to output the segmented fiber bundle [Wasserthal et al, 2019[Wasserthal et al, , 2020. We generated a fixed large number (5000) of fibers per instance to account for the stochastic nature of reconstruction.…”

Tract Specific White Matter Lesion Load Affects White Matter Microstructure and Their Relationships With Functional Connectivity and Cognitive Decline

“…To evaluate the AFD values along each tract, profiles were calculated by averaging the AFD in each segment for 100 equally distant centroid segments/points along the streamline (Wasserthal et al, 2020). The tract-profile of WMH was also obtained from the WMH masks along each tract with the same manner.…”

Movement disorder and sensorimotor abnormalities in schizophrenia and other psychoses - European consensus on assessment and perspectives

“…2 ). These studies established neurobiologically plausible models suggesting disturbed corticalsubcortical motor loops underlying NSS , TD ( Li et al, 2013 ) or AIMS ( Kindler et al, 2019 ), as much as they provided new insights into cortical-cortical mechanisms underlying catatonia ( Hirjak et al, 2020a( Hirjak et al, , 2015bNorthoff, 2002 ;Northoff et al, 1995 ;Richter et al, 2010 ;Walther et al, 2017aWalther et al, , 2019cWasserthal et al, 2020 ). Fortunately, different techniques of data analysis were used in order to investigate sensorimotor and psychomotor abnormalities in SZ and related psychoses.…”