Background: Progressive volumetric changes in the brains of people with schizophrenia have been attributed to a number of factors.
Aims: To determine whether glutamatergic changes in patients with schizophrenia correlated with grey-matter losses during the first years of illness.
Method: Left anterior cingulate and thalamic glutamatergic metabolite levels and grey-matter volumes were examined in 16 patients with first-episode schizophrenia before and after 10 months and 30 months of antipsychotic treatment and in 16 healthy participants on two occasions 30 months apart.
Results: Higher than normal glutamine levels were found in the anterior cingulate and thalamus of never-treated patients. Thalamic levels of glutamine were significantly reduced after 30 months. Limited grey-matter reductions were seen in patients at 10 months followed by widespread grey-matter loss at 30 months. Parietal and temporal lobe grey-matter loss was correlated with thalamic glutamine loss.
Conclusions: Elevated glutamine levels in never-treated patients followed by decreased thalamic glutamine and grey-matter loss in connected regions could indicate either neurodegeneration or a plastic response to reduced subcortical activity.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.106.033670 | DOI Listing |
Neurol Genet
February 2025
Memory Center, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan.
Background And Objectives: A previous postmortem study of men with Christianson syndrome, a disorder caused by loss-of-function mutations in the gene , reported a mechanistic link between pathologic tau accumulation and progressive symptoms such as cerebellar atrophy and cognitive decline. This study aimed to characterize the relationships between neuropathologic manifestations and tau accumulation in heterozygous women with mutation.
Methods: We conducted a multimodal neuroimaging and plasma biomarker study on 3 middle-aged heterozygous women with mutations (proband 1: mid-50s; proband 2: early 50s; proband 3: mid-40s) presenting with progressive extrapyramidal symptoms.
Neuroimage
January 2025
Department of Radiology, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York, NY; Department of Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY. Electronic address:
Background: The cortical gray matter-white matter interface (GWI) is a natural transition zone where the composition of brain tissue abruptly changes and is a location for pathologic change in brain disorders. While diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) is a reliable and well-established technique to characterize brain microstructure, the GWI is difficult to assess with dMRI due to partial volume effects and is normally excluded from such studies.
Methods: In this study, we introduce an approach to characterize the dMRI microstructural profile across the GWI and to assess the sharpness of the microstructural transition from cortical gray matter (GM) to white matter (WM).
Exp Physiol
January 2025
Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.
Absence of the structural protein, dystrophin, results in the neuromuscular disorder Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). In addition to progressive skeletal muscle dysfunction, this multisystemic disorder can also result in cognitive deficits and behavioural changes that are likely to be consequences of dystrophin loss from central neurons and astrocytes. Dystrophin-deficient mdx mice exhibit decreases in grey matter volume in the hippocampus, the brain region that encodes and consolidates memories, and this is exacerbated with ageing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Magn Reson Imaging
January 2025
Department of Neurology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA.
Background: Central arterial stiffening is associated with brain white matter (WM) damage and gray matter (GM) volume loss in older adults, but little is known about this association from an adult lifespan perspective.
Purpose: To investigate the associations of central arterial stiffness with WM microstructural organization, WM lesion load, cortical thickness, and GM volume in healthy adults across the lifespan.
Study Type: This is a cross-sectional study.
Alzheimers Res Ther
January 2025
Laboratory for Clinical Neuroscience, Center for Biomedical Technology, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, IdISSC, Crta M40, km38, Madrid, 28223, Spain.
Background: Dementia patients commonly present multiple neuropathologies, worsening cognitive function, yet structural neuroimaging signatures of dementia have not been positioned in the context of combined pathology. In this study, we implemented an MRI voxel-based approach to explore combined and independent effects of dementia pathologies on grey and white matter structural changes.
Methods: In 91 amnestic dementia patients with post-mortem brain donation, grey matter density and white matter hyperintensity (WMH) burdens were obtained from pre-mortem MRI and analyzed in relation to Alzheimer's, vascular, Lewy body, TDP-43, and hippocampal sclerosis (HS) pathologies.
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