정신분열병 환자의 뇌자기공명촬영 소견

Brain MRI Findings in Schizophrenics

To assess whether meaningful structural changes of the brain are present in schizophrenia, the authors evaluated MRI of 10 patients with schizophrenia and 10 controls. Then we measured the several areas of cerebral structures including frontal cortex, cingulate cortex, caudate nucleus, amygdala, hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, temporal lobe, third ventricle, lateral ventricle and cerebrum. And the authors designed the study so as to be able to examine the relationships between MRI findings and clinical correlates such as age of onset, duration of illness and positive and negative symptom score and general psychopathology score with PANSS. The results were as follows : 1) There were no significant correlations between the age of onset or the duration of illness and the structural changes of the brain in schizophrenics. 2) Both tempotal lobes, both amygdalas, left caudate nucleus and left parahippocampal gyrus in schizophrenics were significantly smaller than those of control subjects(p<0.05), and third ventricle and VBR in schizophrenics were significantly larger than those of control subjects (p.0.05). 3) Positive symptom scores were positively correlated with right frontal cortex and negatively correlated with right amygdala, and negative symptom scores were negatively correlated with left frontal cortex, right cingulate cortex and both caudate nucleuses. In this study, it was suggested that structural changes of the brain were present in schizophrenia, and these changes were significantly correlated with clinical symptoms but not with any of clinical correlates. So we couldn t make affirmation whether these structural changes acted as the causative factor or were resulted from the course of illness