Altered gyrification in schizophrenia and its relation to other morphometric markers

Schizophrenia is modelled as a neurodevelopmental disease with high heritability. However, established markers like cortical thickness and grey matter volume are heavily influenced by post-onset changes and thus provide limited possibility of accessing early pathologies. Gyrification on the other side is assumed to be more specifically determined by genetic and early developmental factors. Here, we compare T1 weighted 3 Tesla MRI scans of 51 schizophrenia patients and 102 healthy controls (matched for age and gender) using a unified processing pipeline with the CAT12 toolbox. Our study provides a direct comparison between 3D gyrification, cortical thickness, and grey matter volume. We demonstrate that significant (p < 0.05, FWE corrected) results only partially overlap between modalities. Gyrification is altered in bilateral insula, temporal pole and left orbitofrontal cortex, while cortical thickness is additionally reduced in the prefrontal cortex, precuneus, and occipital cortex. Grey matter volume (VBM) was reduced in bilateral medial temporal lobes including the amygdala as well as medial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices and cerebellum. Our results lend further support for altered gyrification as a marker of early neurodevelopmental disturbance in schizophrenia and show its relation to other morphological markers.