depicts the directionality of white matter along the x, y, and z axes. A 3D reconstruction of several white matter fiber tracts extracted from diffusion images of the brain is shown in Figure 6. This relatively new technology has become the major tool in neuroscience for investigating white matter, in vivo, and it shows great promise for elucidating further white matter fiber tracts that subserve neuroanatomical connections between both distant and proximal brain regions. Figure 4. Graph of DTI studies Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical in schizophrenia between 1998 and Apri 201 0. DTI, diffusion tensor imaging
Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Figure 5. The anisotropy map in the left panel shows increased fractiona anisotropy (FA) in areas where the water diffusion is restricted, such as in the corpus callosum. Areas with increased FA are visible as white. The color map in the right panel shows the directions … Figure 6. Three-dimensional image reconstructed based on diffusion data acquired on a 3T GE scanner at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. This image shows several major white matter fiber bundles identified through diffusion tensor Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical … Summary With respect to schizophrenia, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical the question is therefore not: “are brain abnormalities present in schizophrenia?” but, “what is the nature of these abnormalities and how can we use this information to understand better the neurobiology of schizophrenia so that we can develop more targeted treatments and perhaps neuroprotective agents to prevent the cascade of progressive changes that are often reported in chronic cases of schizophrenia?”3,23-26 Below, we review structural neuroimaging findings in schizophrenia, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical both MRI and DTI, although we refer the reader to several recent and more comprehensive reviews covering these same topics.3,23-26 MRI findings in schizophrenia Prior
to the advent of MRI, brain abnormalities in schizophrenia were based on PDK4 crude measurements such as measuring the volume of plaster casts from postmortem brains, and pneumoencephalographic studies,27-30 both of which were used to measure ventricular size. The latter studies were quite invasive as they involved pushing air into the brain cavity. Many of these studies, nonetheless, along with CT studies (eg, ref 10), described above, showed enlarged ventricles in the brains of patients with schizophrenia. MRI studies of schizophrenia have also observed ventricular enlargement in schizophrenia (see reviews, eg, refs 3,23-26), with approximately 80% of MRI studies reporting this enlargement.