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Published on: September 1, 2023
Grey matter changes in motor conversion disorder
Selma Aybek1, Timothy R J Nicholson, Bogdan Draganski
1Section of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, , London, UK.
Objective:
To detect anatomical differences in areas related to motor processing between patients with motor conversion disorder (CD) and controls.
Methods:
T1-weighted 3T brain MRI data of 15 patients suffering from motor CD (nine with hemiparesis and six with paraparesis) and 25 age- and gender-matched healthy volunteers were compared using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and voxel-based cortical thickness (VBCT) analysis.
Results:
We report significant cortical thickness (VBCT) increases in the bilateral premotor cortex of hemiparetic patients relative to controls and a trend towards increased grey matter volume (VBM) in the same region. Regression analyses showed a non-significant positive correlation between cortical thickness changes and symptom severity as well as illness duration in CD patients.
Conclusions:
Cortical thickness increases in premotor cortical areas of patients with hemiparetic CD provide evidence for altered brain structure in a condition with presumed normal brain anatomy. These may either represent premorbid vulnerability or a plasticity phenomenon related to the disease with the trends towards correlations with clinical variables supporting the latter.
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