Absence of regional brain volume change in schizophrenia associated with short-term atypical antipsychotic treatment.

The first aim of this pilot study was to determine if longitudinal change in caudate volume could be detected in chronic schizophrenic patients after 12 weeks of atypical antipsychotic treatment. A sub-aim of the first aim was to determine if similar results could be obtained from an operator-assisted segmentation tool for volumetric imaging (ITK-SNAP) and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) methods in the caudate. The second aim was to determine if frontal and temporal lobe grey matter, white matter, ventricular and sulcal cerebrospinal fluid volume change could be detected after 12 weeks of atypical antipsychotic treatment with VBM.