Publications by authors named "Zwarte S"

The human brain undergoes major developmental changes during pregnancy. Three-dimensional (3D) ultrasound images allow for the opportunity to investigate typical prenatal brain development on a large scale. Transabdominal ultrasound can be challenging due to the small fetal brain and its movement, as well as multiple sweeps that may not yield high-quality images, especially when brain structures are unclear.

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Enlarged lateral ventricle (LV) volume and decreased volume in the corpus callosum (CC) are hallmarks of schizophrenia (SZ). We previously showed an inverse correlation between LV and CC volumes in SZ, with global functioning decreasing with increased LV volume. This study investigates the relationship between LV volume, CC abnormalities, and the microRNA MIR137 and its regulated genes in SZ, because of MIR137's essential role in neurodevelopment.

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Three-dimensional fetal ultrasound is commonly used to study the volumetric development of brain structures. To date, only a limited number of automatic procedures for delineating the intracranial volume exist. Hence, intracranial volume measurements from three-dimensional ultrasound images are predominantly performed manually.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study looked at how the brain's left and right sides might differ in people with schizophrenia compared to those without it, using brain scans from over 5,000 patients and 6,000 control subjects.
  • Researchers found that people with schizophrenia had slightly thinner areas in the left side of their brains, especially in certain regions, compared to those without the disorder.
  • The differences in brain structure might be linked to how schizophrenia affects brain functions, like language, but more research is needed to understand why they happen.
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Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are neurodevelopmental disorders with overlapping symptoms and a shared genetic background. Deviations in intracranial volume (ICV)—a marker for neurodevelopment—differ between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Here, we investigated whether genetic risk for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is related to ICV in the general population by using the UK Biobank data (n = 20,196).

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Article Synopsis
  • The human brain evolves over time, with changes in structure affecting mental health and diseases throughout life.
  • This study identifies genetic variants that influence brain growth and shrinkage, using data from 15,640 individuals and focusing on 15 brain structures.
  • Key genes linked to metabolism were found, highlighting connections to conditions like depression and schizophrenia, and suggesting that understanding these genetic factors could lead to insights about healthy and problematic brain development and aging.
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Background: There is evidence for a polygenic contribution to psychosis. One targetable mechanism through which polygenic variation may impact on individuals and interact with the social environment is stress sensitization, characterized by elevated reactivity to minor stressors in daily life. The current study aimed to investigate whether stress reactivity is modified by polygenic risk score for schizophrenia (PRS) in cases with enduring non-affective psychotic disorder, first-degree relatives of cases, and controls.

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Schizophrenia patients show signs of accelerated aging in cognitive and physiological domains. Both schizophrenia and accelerated aging, as measured by MRI brain images and epigenetic clocks, are correlated with increased mortality. However, the association between these aging measures have not yet been studied in schizophrenia patients.

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Low-frequency 1q21.1 distal deletion and duplication copy number variant (CNV) carriers are predisposed to multiple neurodevelopmental disorders, including schizophrenia, autism and intellectual disability. Human carriers display a high prevalence of micro- and macrocephaly in deletion and duplication carriers, respectively.

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Background: Schizophrenia negatively affects quality of life (QoL). A handful of variables from small studies have been reported to influence QoL in patients with schizophrenia, but a study comprehensively dissecting the genetic and non-genetic contributing factors to QoL in these patients is currently lacking.

Aims: We adopted a hypothesis-generating approach to assess the phenotypic and genotypic determinants of QoL in schizophrenia.

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Article Synopsis
  • First-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients (SZ-FDRs) exhibit similar brain and cognitive abnormalities as patients, while those related to bipolar disorder (BD-FDRs) show larger brain volume but inconsistent cognitive patterns.
  • A meta-analysis involving nearly 6,000 participants found that SZ-FDRs have a thinner cortex and lower IQ scores compared to controls, whereas BD-FDRs show a larger cortical surface area with only slight IQ reductions.
  • Both relative groups achieved similar educational levels, indicating that structural brain differences are likely connected to the predisposition for schizophrenia or bipolar disorder rather than general cognitive impairments.
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MRI-derived brain measures offer a link between genes, the environment and behavior and have been widely studied in bipolar disorder (BD). However, many neuroimaging studies of BD have been underpowered, leading to varied results and uncertainty regarding effects. The Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis (ENIGMA) Bipolar Disorder Working Group was formed in 2012 to empower discoveries, generate consensus findings and inform future hypothesis-driven studies of BD.

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Article Synopsis
  • * A systematic review involved ten studies with nearly 19,000 participants, concluding that the burden of CNVs does not correlate with general cognitive performance.
  • * However, specific schizophrenia-associated CNVs were linked to poorer verbal recall and perceptual reasoning abilities in individuals with psychotic disorders and their relatives, suggesting they may serve as biomarkers for cognitive impairment and increased disease risk.
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Cross-sectional studies have shown that the polygenic risk score for schizophrenia (PRS) may influence heterogeneity in cognitive performance although evidence from family-based longitudinal study is limited. This study aimed to identify trajectories of cognitive function and assess whether the PRS is associated with baseline cognitive performance and predicted six-year trajectories. We included 1119 patients with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder, and 1059 unaffected siblings and 586 unrelated controls who are eligible at baseline.

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This review summarizes the last decade of work by the ENIGMA (Enhancing NeuroImaging Genetics through Meta Analysis) Consortium, a global alliance of over 1400 scientists across 43 countries, studying the human brain in health and disease. Building on large-scale genetic studies that discovered the first robustly replicated genetic loci associated with brain metrics, ENIGMA has diversified into over 50 working groups (WGs), pooling worldwide data and expertise to answer fundamental questions in neuroscience, psychiatry, neurology, and genetics. Most ENIGMA WGs focus on specific psychiatric and neurological conditions, other WGs study normal variation due to sex and gender differences, or development and aging; still other WGs develop methodological pipelines and tools to facilitate harmonized analyses of "big data" (i.

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Article Synopsis
  • Scientists studied the brain's outer layer, called the cerebral cortex, to learn how genes can affect its structure.
  • They looked at brain scans from over 51,000 people and found 199 important genetic markers that relate to how the cortex is shaped.
  • The study showed that these genetic markers are linked to different brain functions and conditions like thinking skills, sleep problems, and ADHD.
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Importance: Recurrent microdeletions and duplications in the genomic region 15q11.2 between breakpoints 1 (BP1) and 2 (BP2) are associated with neurodevelopmental disorders. These structural variants are present in 0.

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Background: Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder share genetic liability, and some structural brain abnormalities are common to both conditions. First-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia (FDRs-SZ) show similar brain abnormalities to patients, albeit with smaller effect sizes. Imaging findings in first-degree relatives of patients with bipolar disorder (FDRs-BD) have been inconsistent in the past, but recent studies report regionally greater volumes compared with control subjects.

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We organized 10Kin1day, a pop-up scientific event with the goal to bring together neuroimaging groups from around the world to jointly analyze 10,000+ existing MRI connectivity datasets during a 3-day workshop. In this report, we describe the motivation and principles of 10Kin1day, together with a public release of 8,000+ MRI connectome maps of the human brain.

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Prior to and following the publication of this article the authors noted that the complete list of authors was not included in the main article and was only present in Supplementary Table 1. The author list in the original article has now been updated to include all authors, and Supplementary Table 1 has been removed. All other supplementary files have now been updated accordingly.

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Structural brain abnormalities and cognitive deficits have been reported in patients with schizophrenia and to a lesser extent in their first-degree relatives (FDRs). Here we investigated whether brain abnormalities in nonpsychotic relatives differ per type of FDR and how these abnormalities are related to intelligent quotient (IQ). Nine hundred eighty individuals from 5 schizophrenia family cohorts (330 FDRs, 432 controls, 218 patients) were included.

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Article Synopsis
  • Carriers of the 16p11.2 distal CNV have an increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders like autism and schizophrenia, prompting an investigation into their brain structure.
  • A study compared brain volumes of 12 deletion and 12 duplication carriers against 6882 non-carriers, revealing negative associations between CNV copy number and volumes of several key brain regions.
  • Results indicated that both deletion and duplication carriers had lower full-scale IQs compared to non-carriers, highlighting distinct structural brain alterations linked to 16p11.2 CNV that may contribute to neurodevelopmental disorders.
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Background: The profile of cortical neuroanatomical abnormalities in schizophrenia is not fully understood, despite hundreds of published structural brain imaging studies. This study presents the first meta-analysis of cortical thickness and surface area abnormalities in schizophrenia conducted by the ENIGMA (Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta Analysis) Schizophrenia Working Group.

Methods: The study included data from 4474 individuals with schizophrenia (mean age, 32.

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