The Study Of Whole Brain White Matter In Schizophrenia

Background and Objective:Schizophrenia is a group of unknown mental disorder with a cluster of symptoms,including the abnormality of feeling, thinking, behaviour and so on. The main charactersof SZ are abnormal of environmental disharmony and spiritual activities, which is a heavyburden of social, family. The integrity connection of white matter is the basis of themaintain of the normal function of the brain, so the brain regions of abnormal feeling andmental activity of the SZ may have a certain amount of white matter fiber structureabnormalities, but there are many disputes in recent studies. In this study, diffusion tensorimaging (diffusion tensor imaging, DTI) technology based on fiber skeleton-based spatialstatistical methods (tract based spatial statistics, TBSS) were used to investigate whitematter in first episode psychosis patients, auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia,no-auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia, and healthy people, which offer theneuroimaging evidence for identify the structure and pathological changes of the whitematter in schizophrenia. Methods:Experiment1: The study strictly selected40first episode psychosis patients and40cases of age, gender matched healthy subjects, all the subjects were right-handed.Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) scans were performed in all patients and healthy subjects.The imaging data were mainly processed by tract based spatial statistics (TBSS) toolboxin Functional MRI Software Library (Functional MRI software Library, FSL4.1.9;(http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fsl). Then compared the data of two groups by randompermutation test (RPT) which based on nonparametric, use FSL randomization software(http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fsl/randomise/index.html), random arrangement was set to5000times, multiple comparison was used to analysis two groups, fractional anisotropy(fractional anisotropy, FA) and average diffusivity (mean diffusion, MD) data of wholebrain white matter, threshold-free cluster enhancement (threshold-free clusterenhancement, TFCE) was used to rectify type I error, P <0.05was considered statisticallysignificant.Experiment2: The study strictly selected32auditory hallucinations in schizophreniaand32cases of age, gender matched healthy subjects, all the subjects were right-handed.Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) scans were performed in all patients and healthy subjects.The imaging data were mainly processed by tract based spatial statistics (TBSS) toolboxin Functional MRI Software Library (Functional MRI software Library, FSL4.1.9;(http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fsl). Then compared the data of two groups by randompermutation test (RPT) which based on nonparametric, use FSL randomization software(http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fsl/randomise/index.html), random arrangement was set to5000times, multiple comparison was used to analysis two groups, fractional anisotropy(fractional anisotropy, FA) data of whole brain white matter, threshold-free clusterenhancement (threshold-free cluster enhancement, TFCE) was used to rectify type I error,P <0.05was considered statistically significant. Results:Experiment1：Compared with the healthy control group, first episode psychosispatients,FA values of whole brain white matter was considered no statistically difference.Experiment2：Compared with the healthy control group, The auditory hallucinationsof schizophrenia group showed significantly lower FA values in left uncinatefasciculus(UF), left inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus(IFOF), left anterior thalamicradiation(ATR), left frontal lobe, left anterior limb of the internal capsule and leftexternal capsule.Conclusion:Experiment1：Schizophrenia is a large class of mental illness, including a variety ofclinical classification of a variety of feeling, thinking, emotional disorders, differentsymptoms associated with different functional brain areas, when the various differences inarea superimposed together, which will reduce the area of the respective difference wassignificant and may lead to a negative result.Experiment2：It seemed that white matter fiber of the left UF, left IFOF and leftATR have been damaged, which suggests that the abnormal connections between leftfrontal lobe and left Thalamus, left Occipital, Temporal lobe may cause Auditoryhallucinations in schizophrenia.