The association between brain volume and intelligence is of genetic origin.
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CT follow-up studies were done in 65 alcoholics before an inpatient treatment and after a period with confirmed abstinence of 5 weeks duration. The scans were rated "blind" by linear measurement of well defined distances. An improvement (significant reduction of brain "atrophy") was found in 33 patients (50.8%), 5 patients (7,7%) showed a trend towards progression of brain "atrophy". The possibility of recovery tends to be significantly greater in younger subjects. These findings and the results of recent MR follow-up studies are consistent with decreased free water during alcohol intoxication and an increase in brain water during alcohol withdrawal.
Volumetric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods for the measurement of various neuroanatomical regions are of great interest in studies of neuropsychiatric disorders. Both manual and semiautomated methods have been developed. Manual methods include tracing and point counting. Point counting methods are widely used in post-mortem and microscopy studies. Point counting has been well validated for these purposes. In this article, we report in a series of separate studies the accuracy and reproducibility of point-counting methods. Absolute accuracy was evaluated with a spherical phantom. Accuracy and time efficiency were subsequently assessed with an anatomically realistic phantom and various size grids. The point-counting method was also compared to a tracing method. Finally, the reproducibility of the point-counting method for the caudate and putamen was evaluated on four subjects in a test-retest experiment. These studies provide an estimate of the accuracy and time efficiency of point-counting methods. The test-retest reliability was also high for both caudate and putamen. Findings suggest that point counting is a reliable and efficient method for estimating volumes.
The concept that schizophrenia has its antecedents in neurodevelopment has long been debated and has been at the forefront of research on this disorder over the last decade. However new recent evidence from controlled longitudinal studies indicates that some of the structural brain anomalies observed in schizophrenia may continue to progress sporadically after the onset of clinical illness. The studies vary in cohort composition, stage of illness studied, duration of follow-up interval, and specific brain regions with findings. Nevertheless, the findings as a whole suggest that the brain changes in size throughout the lifespan of an individual and to a greater extent in schizophrenia. While the detected abnormalities could be explained by various technical artifacts, or physiological epi-phenomena, that they result from an ongoing neurochemical, physiological or morphological process characteristic of the underlying basis for the disorder is an intriguing possibility that lends itself to possible future intervention.
PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to examine the comparability of morphometric measurements made on pediatric data sets collected at five scanner locations, each using variations on a 3D spoiled gradient-recalled echo (SPGR) pulse sequence. METHOD: Archived MR data from 60 typically developing children were collected and separated into seven groups based on the pulse sequence used. A highly automated image-processing procedure was used to segment the brain data into white tissue, gray tissue, and CSF compartments and into various neuroanatomic regions of interest. RESULTS: Volumetric comparisons between groups revealed differences in areas of the temporal and occipital lobes. These differences were observed when comparing data sets with different image orientations and appeared to be due to partial volume averaging (PVA) and susceptibility-induced geometric distortions. CONCLUSION: Our results indicate that slice selection and image resolution should be controlled in volumetric studies using aggregated data from multiple centers to minimize the effects of PVA and susceptibility-induced geometric distortions.
Transgenic mouse models of Alzheimer's disease (AD) expressing high levels of amyloid precursor protein (APP) with familial AD (FAD) mutations have proven to be extremely useful in understanding pathogenic processes of AD especially those that involve amyloidogenesis. We earlier described Austrian APP T714I pathology that leads to one of the earliest AD age-at-onsets with abundant intracellular and extracellular amyloid deposits in brain. The latter strikingly was non-fibrillar diffuse amyloid, composed of N-truncated A beta 42 in absence of A beta 40. In vitro, this mutation leads to one of the highest A beta 42/A beta 40 ratios among all FAD mutations. We generated an APP T714I transgenic mouse model that despite having 10 times lower transgene than endogenous murine APP deposited intraneuronal A beta in brain by 6 months of age. Accumulations increased with age, and this was paralleled by decreased brain sizes on volumetric MRI, compared to age-matched and similar transgene-expressing APP wild-type mice, although, with these levels of transgenic expression we did not detect neuronal loss or significant memory impairment. Immunohistochemical studies revealed that the majority of the intraneuronal A beta deposits colocalized with late endosomal markers, although some A beta inclusions were also positive for lysosomal and Golgi markers. These data support earlier observations of A beta accumulation in the endosomal-lysosomal pathway and the hypothesis that intraneuronal accumulation of A beta could be an important factor in the AD pathogenesis.
Rates of temporal horn volume change were significantly greater in the subjects with mild cognitive impairment who were developing dementia vs those who remained stable.
BACKGROUND: Previous studies have shown cognitive impairment in breast cancer survivors who were exposed to adjuvant chemotherapy. Neural damage by chemotherapy might have played some part in these findings. The current study explored the regional brain volume difference between breast cancer survivors exposed to adjuvant chemotherapy (C+) and those unexposed (C-). METHODS: High-resolution 1.5-tesla brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) databases of breast cancer survivors and healthy controls were used. Brain images were preprocessed for optimal voxel-based morphometry. Comparisons of gray matter and white matter were performed between the C+ and the C- groups, by using MRI scans from within 1 year (the 1-year study, n = 51 and n = 55, respectively) or 3 years after their cancer surgery (the 3-year study, n = 73 and n = 59, respectively). As exploratory analyses, correlation analyses were performed between indices of the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised and regional brain volume where the volume were significantly smaller. As a reference, MRI scans of cancer survivors were compared with those of healthy controls (n = 55 for the 1-year study and n = 37 for the 3-year study). RESULTS: The C+ patients had smaller gray matter and white matter including prefrontal, parahippocampal, and cingulate gyrus, and precuneus in the 1-year study. However, no difference was observed in the 3-year study. The volumes of the prefrontal, parahippocampal gyrus, and precuneus were significantly correlated with indices of attention/concentration and/or visual memory. Comparisons with healthy controls did not show any significant differences. CONCLUSIONS: Adjuvant chemotherapy might have an influence on brain structure, which may account for previously observed cognitive impairments.
A group of 30 alcoholics as identified using the MALT score were examined both within the first 36 h of alcohol withdrawal and then again at the end of a 10-day treatment in hospital. We looked for clinical signs of dehydration, water and electrolyte imbalance, and concentration of steroid metabolites in the urine. Cranial computed tomography was also performed twice, again at the beginning and end of the 10-day period. The size of cerebrospinal fluid spaces was calculated through measuring the frontal interhemisphere distance, the width of cortical sulci, the ventricle III diameter, the Cella media index and also the number of vermal sulci. All patients had a brain atrophy which did not disappear within the 10 days. The neuroradiological parameters remained completely unchanged in the control examination. However, the laboratory parameters of the internal milieu had normalized. Therefore, it is submitted that the shrinkage of the brain of alcoholics cannot be due to a reversible intra- or extracellulary dehydration. There was also no proof of a hormonal cause for the brain shrinkage. As a consequence other etiological factors gain importance, such as malnutrition or a toxic alcohol effect.
The behavior of reproductive female ants distinctly changes during the transition from virgin to mature, egg-laying queen. A winged female ant flies only once during her lifetime when she engages in the nuptial flight. Once she is mated she sheds her wings, excavates a nest and starts laying eggs, the basis for her future colony. We show for two species of harvester ants that this transition is accompanied by changes in the performance of behavioral tests: flying virgins are positively phototactic and prefer open areas, whereas young queens prefer the dark, avoid open areas and, given the opportunity, dig into the soil. These behavioral changes coincide with morphological changes in the brain. The brains of mature queens are significantly smaller than those of virgin females at the time of their mating flight. A disproportionately large shrinkage occurs in the medulla and other parts of the visual system during the early adult life of the queen. The brain reduction appears to be adaptive as mature queens show reduced behavioral repertoires and live in the dark. In contrast to virgin females, they do not rely on vision and might increase their fitness by reducing metabolically costly neural tissue.
Valid comparisons of functional activation volumes from fMRI and PET require accurate registration, matched spatial resolution, and if possible matched noise. We coregistered 4.0T-fMRI and PET volumes, using a series of linear and nonlinear transformations applied to the PET volumes. Because of the limited number of fMRI slices that were available, PET volumes were transformed to the fMRI space. Since 4.0T-fMRI and 4.0T-MRI volumes have significant spatial distortion due to magnet inhomogeneities, high resolution 1.5T-MRI volumes were nonlinearly transformed to 4.0T-MRI volumes as part of the transformation chain. The smoothing effects of these registration transformations were measured, in order to match the spatial resolution of the coregistered fMRI and PET volumes. Spatial resolution of the transformed PET volumes in the fMRI space was degraded by up to 60% due to the transformation process. Due to both the image acquisition characteristics and the coregistration process, the transformed PET volumes had a spatial resolution that was lower than that of tMRI. Therefore, significant smoothing of fMRI volumes was necessary to match their spatial resolution with that of the transformed PET volumes. Matching the spatial resolution of the fMRI volumes to those of the transformed PET volumes was achieved by matching the shape of their point spread functions. In order to do this, Gaussian kernels were employed to smooth the fMRI volumes. We were unable to simultaneously match the resolution and noise of fMRI and PET signals in the motor cortex. Activation maps derived from transformed PET and smoothed fMRI volumes were compared. Contralateral motor cortex was active in all modalities but there were large variations in the size of the activated region and its signal to noise ratio across BOLD, FAIR, and PET images within each subject. Nevertheless, the relative CBF changes measured by FAIR were consistent with those determined by PET.
Twin studies are important to investigate genetic influences on variation in human brain morphology in health and disease. However, the twin method has been criticized for its alleged non-generalizability due to differences in the intrauterine and family environment of twins, compared with singletons. To test whether twin-singleton differences complicate interpretation of genetic contributions on variation in brain volume, brains from 112 pairs of twins and 34 of their siblings with a mean (standard deviation) age of 30.7 (9.6) years were scanned using MRI. The influence of birth order, zygosity and twin-sibling differences on brain volume measures was analysed using maximum-likelihood model fitting. Variances were homogeneous across birth order, zygosity and twin-singleton status. Irrespective of zygosity, intracranial volume was smaller in second-born twins compared with first-born twins and compared with siblings. Grey matter volume was smaller in second-born twins compared with first-born twins. White matter was smaller in twins compared with siblings. Differences in grey and white matter between these groups were no longer significant after correction for intracranial volume. Total brain, and lateral and third ventricle volumes were comparable in twins and singletons. In conclusion, second-born twins have a smaller intracranial volume than their first-born co-twins and siblings. This suggests aberrant early brain development in second-born twins, which is consistent with the suboptimal pre- and perinatal environment related to birth order in twins. Since other brain volume measures were comparable between the groups, twin studies can provide reliable estimates of heritabilities in brain volume measures and these can be generalized to the singleton population.
Cranial computed tomography (CT) was performed in three different samples of young women with anorexia nervosa before and after treatment. The biggest changes in cerebrospinal fluid volume were observed in the supratentorial and extracerebral-subarachnoid area, with smaller changes in the ventricles. These changes, as assessed by different methods of volumetric and planimetric measurement, were statistically significant and were correlated with the changes in body weight. Two patient groups could be distinguished on the basis of the presence or absence of cerebellar pseudoatrophy in the initial CT, and these groups also showed differences in preclinical and clinical course.
Sex differences have been observed in neurobehavioral measures and in neuroanatomic studies. Men and women differ in emotion processing, including perception, experience and expression, most notably reflected in greater male aggression. We examine temporo-limbic and prefrontal structures volumetrically in a large well-characterized sample of healthy adults, applying morphometric methods across cerebral regions that regulate emotions. Quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed in 116 healthy adults, 57 men and 59 women, age range 18-49 years. We used reliable methods of region of interest identification to examine sex differences in volume of temporo-limbic and frontal regions. An automated tissue segmentation procedure was used to obtain separate measurements for gray and white matter. After correcting for cranial volume, men and women had identical volumes of amygdala and hippocampus, as well as dorsal prefrontal cortex. However, women had larger orbital frontal cortices than men, resulting in highly significant difference in the ratio of orbital gray to amygdala volume (P = 0.002). The larger volume of cortex devoted to emotional modulation may relate to behavioral evidence for sex differences in emotion processing.
Using high-resolution in vivo magnetic resonance morphometry we measured the midsagittal area of the corpus callosum and total forebrain volume in 120 healthy young adults (mean age (+/- s.d.) 25.7 +/- 4.7 years). The forebrain volume-adjusted size of the corpus callosum was larger in women than in men (32 mm2 mean difference; p = 0.011). Handedness had no effect in this measurement. The morphometric data confirm a gender difference in cerebral structural organization.
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PURPOSE: We evaluated the impact of premature extrauterine life on brain maturation. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Twelve neonates underwent MR imaging at 40 (39.64 +/- 0.98) weeks (full term). Fifteen premature infants underwent 2 MR imaging examinations, after birth (preterm at birth) and at 40 weeks (41.03 +/- 1.33) (preterm at term). A 3D MR imaging technique was used to measure brain volumes compared with intracranial volume: total brain volume, cortical gray matter, myelinated white matter, unmyelinated white matter, basal ganglia (BG), and CSF. RESULTS: The average absolute volume of intracranial volume (269.8 mL +/- 36.5), total brain volume (246.5 +/- 32.3), cortical gray matter (85.53 mL +/- 22.23), unmyelinated white matter (142.4 mL +/-14.98), and myelinated white matter (6.099 mL +/-1.82) for preterm at birth was significantly lower compared with that for the preterm at term: the average global volume of intracranial volume (431.7 +/- 69.98), total brain volume (391 +/- 66,1), cortical gray matter (179 mL +/- 41.54), unmyelinated white matter (185.3 mL +/- 30.8), and myelinated white matter (10.66 mL +/- 3.05). It was also lower compared with that of full-term infants: intracranial volume (427.4 mL +/- 53.84), total brain volume (394 +/- 49.22), cortical gray matter (181.4 +/- 29.27), unmyelinated white matter (183.4 +/- 27.37), and myelinated white matter (10.72 +/- 4.63). The relative volume of cortical gray matter (30.62 +/- 5.13) and of unmyelinated white matter (53.15 +/- 4.8) for preterm at birth was significantly different compared with the relative volume of cortical gray matter (41.05 +/- 5.44) and of unmyelinated white matter (43.22 +/- 5.11) for the preterm at term. Premature infants had similar brain tissue volumes at 40 weeks to full-term infants. CONCLUSION: MR segmentation techniques demonstrate that cortical neonatal maturation in moderately premature infants at term and term-born infants was similar.