Publications by authors named "Spalletta G"

Article Synopsis
  • Schizophrenia (SCZ) shows differences in brain structure and symptoms between men and women, suggesting distinct neurobiological factors linked to sex.
  • The study analyzed MRI data from nearly 6,000 participants to explore the effects of sex and diagnosis on the shape of deep brain regions in individuals with SCZ compared to healthy controls.
  • Results indicated that women with SCZ had more pronounced shape abnormalities than men, but there were no significant interactions between diagnosis and sex, highlighting the need for further exploration of sex-related differences in schizophrenia's neurobiology.
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Background And Hypotheses: In the past 2 decades, substantial effort has been put into research on therapeutic options for people at ultra-high risk (UHR) for developing a first episode of psychosis (FEP), focusing on omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) in preventing transition to psychosis. Despite an initial positive finding, subsequent studies failed to find a beneficial effect. The current study aimed to further investigate the effect of omega-3 PUFAs in UHR, to determine whether this line of research is worth pursuing.

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The progression of Parkinson's disease (PD) is associated with microstructural alterations in neural pathways, contributing to both motor and cognitive decline. However, conflicting findings have emerged due to the use of heterogeneous methods in small studies. Here we performed a large diffusion MRI study in PD, integrating data from 17 cohorts worldwide, to identify stage-specific profiles of white matter differences.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study used machine learning to classify subtypes of schizophrenia by analyzing brain images from over 4,000 patients and healthy individuals through international collaboration.* -
  • Researchers identified two neurostructural subgroups: one with predominant cortical loss and enlarged striatum, and another with significant subcortical loss in areas like the hippocampus and striatum.* -
  • The findings suggest this new imaging-based classification could redefine schizophrenia based on biological similarities, enhancing our understanding and treatment of the disorder.*
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Structural neuroimaging data have been used to compute an estimate of the biological age of the brain (brain-age) which has been associated with other biologically and behaviorally meaningful measures of brain development and aging. The ongoing research interest in brain-age has highlighted the need for robust and publicly available brain-age models pre-trained on data from large samples of healthy individuals. To address this need we have previously released a developmental brain-age model.

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Article Synopsis
  • Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) affects about 1% of people and has a strong genetic component, but previous studies have not fully explained its genetic causes or biological mechanisms.
  • A large genome-wide association study (GWAS) analyzed data from over 53,000 OCD cases and over 2 million control participants, identifying 30 significant genetic markers related to OCD and suggesting a 6.7% heritability from SNPs.
  • The research also found 249 candidate risk genes linked to OCD, particularly in specific brain regions, and showed genetic correlations with various psychiatric disorders, laying the groundwork for further studies and potential treatments.
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Article Synopsis
  • Formal thought disorder (FTD) is a key symptom of schizophrenia, but its exact neurobiological causes and correlation with brain volume loss are still unclear, which this study seeks to address using a large cohort of patients and controls.
  • The research focuses on differentiating between positive, negative, and total formal thought disorder while investigating brain structural changes and their cellular bases using virtual histology tools.
  • Findings reveal distinct neural networks for positive and negative FTD, with negative FTD showing preserved orbitofrontal thickness and both FTD types linked to unique cellular fingerprint patterns, advancing our understanding of the disorder.
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Article Synopsis
  • * This large-scale study analyzed MRI scans from over 2,000 schizophrenia patients and 2,800 healthy controls to assess brain volume and microstructural integrity, using advanced modeling techniques.
  • * Results showed that aggressive behavior was significantly associated with reduced cortical and white matter volumes, particularly in key brain areas, suggesting a direct neurological link to aggression in schizophrenia patients.
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Article Synopsis
  • Schizophrenia is characterized by significant changes in brain structure, but it's not clear if these changes relate to the brain's network organization.
  • Researchers analyzed MRI scans from nearly 2,500 people with schizophrenia alongside healthy controls to see how structural changes connect to brain networks.
  • The study found that certain regions in the brain that are crucial for connectivity are more affected in schizophrenia, indicating a link between brain network vulnerability and the disease's impact, with some similarities to bipolar disorder but not major depressive disorder.
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White matter pathways, typically studied with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), have been implicated in the neurobiology of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, due to limited sample sizes and the predominance of single-site studies, the generalizability of OCD classification based on diffusion white matter estimates remains unclear. Here, we tested classification accuracy using the largest OCD DTI dataset to date, involving 1336 adult participants (690 OCD patients and 646 healthy controls) and 317 pediatric participants (175 OCD patients and 142 healthy controls) from 18 international sites within the ENIGMA OCD Working Group.

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Introduction: Regional gray matter (GM) alterations have been reported in early-onset psychosis (EOP, onset before age 18), but previous studies have yielded conflicting results, likely due to small sample sizes and the different brain regions examined. In this study, we conducted a whole brain voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis in a large sample of individuals with EOP, using the newly developed ENIGMA-VBM tool.

Methods: 15 independent cohorts from the ENIGMA-EOP working group participated in the study.

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Background: Increasing evidence is demonstrating that degeneration of specific thalamic nuclei, in addition to the hippocampus, may occur in Alzheimer's disease (AD) from the prodromal stage (mild cognitive impairment - MCI) and contribute to memory impairment.

Objective: Here, we evaluated the presence of macro and micro structural alterations at the level of the anterior thalamic nuclei (ATN) and medio-dorsal thalamic nuclei (MDTN) in AD and amnestic MCI (aMCI) and the possible relationship between such changes and the severity of memory impairment.

Methods: For this purpose, a sample of 50 patients with aMCI, 50 with AD, and 50 age- and education-matched healthy controls (HC) were submitted to a 3-T MRI protocol with whole-brain T1-weighted and diffusion tensor imaging and a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment.

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We present an empirically benchmarked framework for sex-specific normative modeling of brain morphometry that can inform about the biological and behavioral significance of deviations from typical age-related neuroanatomical changes and support future study designs. This framework was developed using regional morphometric data from 37,407 healthy individuals (53% female; aged 3-90 years) following a comparative evaluation of eight algorithms and multiple covariate combinations pertaining to image acquisition and quality, parcellation software versions, global neuroimaging measures, and longitudinal stability. The Multivariate Factorial Polynomial Regression (MFPR) emerged as the preferred algorithm optimized using nonlinear polynomials for age and linear effects of global measures as covariates.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study explores the structural brain differences in individuals with schizophrenia compared to healthy controls, focusing on various brain metrics like cortical thickness and subcortical volume using a large international dataset.
  • Results show that people with schizophrenia have greater variability in brain structure, particularly in the frontotemporal regions, suggesting distinct subtypes of the disorder may exist.
  • The findings highlight the significance of understanding brain structure variability to improve knowledge of schizophrenia and help identify potential biomarkers for the illness.
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Machine learning can be used to define subtypes of psychiatric conditions based on shared clinical and biological foundations, presenting a crucial step toward establishing biologically based subtypes of mental disorders. With the goal of identifying subtypes of disease progression in schizophrenia, here we analyzed cross-sectional brain structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data from 4,291 individuals with schizophrenia (1,709 females, age=32.5 years±11.

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Article Synopsis
  • A study investigates the connection between formal thought disorder (FTD) symptoms in schizophrenia and brain volume deficiencies, using data from 752 individuals with schizophrenia and 1256 controls.
  • The research identifies separate neural networks associated with positive and negative FTD, revealing differences in brain structures affected by each type of symptom.
  • Findings show that negative FTD is linked to specific neuronal and astrocyte cell types, while positive FTD is associated with microglial cells, enhancing understanding of the biological mechanisms behind these symptoms.
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Cognitive insight refers to the ability to question one's judgments and cognitive biases and is underpinned by specific metacognitive processes. The Beck Cognitive Insight Scale was developed to assess cognitive insight and includes two subscales, Self-Reflectiveness and Self-Certainty (SC). The present study aimed to investigate the underlying factor structure of the Italian version of the BCIS in patients with schizophrenia (SZ) and in the general population (GP) for the first time.

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Converging evidence suggests that schizophrenia (SZ) with primary, enduring negative symptoms (i.e., Deficit SZ (DSZ)) represents a distinct entity within the SZ spectrum while the neurobiological underpinnings remain undetermined.

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Article Synopsis
  • Scientists studied over 176,000 people to see how certain genes might protect against Parkinson's disease (PD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD).
  • They found that specific types of a gene called HLA could help reduce the risk of these diseases and lower harmful proteins in the brain.
  • This suggests that our immune system might help protect us from PD and AD, which could lead to new treatments in the future.
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Introduction: the interplay between neuropsychological and communicative abilities in Parkinson's disease (PD) has been relatively overlooked, and it is not entirely understood which difficulties are consequent to impaired motor control, and which have a linguistic/cognitive basis. Here, we examined narrative discourse in PD using a multi-level analysis procedure considering sentence-level (productivity, lexical-grammatical processing) and discourse-level processes (narrative organization, informativeness), and partialling out patients' motor speech impairments. The interaction between cognitive (i.

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Article Synopsis
  • Formal thought disorder (FTD) significantly impacts schizophrenia, yet its neurobiological causes, particularly the connection between FTD symptoms and brain volume changes, are largely unexplored.
  • This study, involving a large cohort of 752 individuals with schizophrenia and 1256 controls, aims to clarify the neuroanatomical aspects of positive and negative FTD and their cellular foundations using advanced virtual histology techniques.
  • Results revealed two distinct neural networks for FTD: one linked to negative symptoms, with preserved orbitofrontal thickness, and another for positive symptoms, affecting lateral temporal areas; each network had unique cellular signatures, highlighting different underlying mechanisms for these psychotic symptoms.
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