Cingulate gyrus in schizophrenic patients and normal volunteers

Comparable magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sections of right and left anterior and posterior cingulate gyrus were measured blindly with a method developed by the authors in 14 patients with schizophrenia (by DSM-III-R criteria) and 14 normal volunteers individually matched to the patients for age, sex, education, and parental socioeconomic status. Interrater reliability met or exceeded 0.92 (k) on all cingulate structures measured. Brain volume in the two groups differed by 2% (normal > schizophrenia), but the difference was not significant. All cingulate gyri measures were nonsignificantly smaller in the patient group by 3-5%. There was an inverse correlation between left anterior cingulate size and severity of hallucinations that was, however, not significant after Bonferroni correction. Lateral asymmetry of the cingulate regions measured was the same in both groups, with the left being nonsignificantly smaller than the right for all regions. We demonstrate a reliable method, unreported thus far in the literature, to measure the cingulate gyrus on MRI; the results suggest that left cingulate gyrus size may be inversely related to severity of hallucinations in schizophrenia.