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Anterior Limb of the Internal Capsule in Schizophrenia: a Diffusion Tensor Tractography Study
Institution:
 1Department of General Psychiatry, Medical University Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria.
2Clinical Neuroscience Division, Laboratory of Neuroscience, Boston VA Healthcare System-Brockton Division, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Brockton, MA, USA.
3Department of Nuclear Medicine, Asan Medical Center, Seoul 138-736, South Korea.
4Laboratory of Mathematic Imaging, Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
5Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory, Clinical Neuroscience Division, Laboratory of Neuroscience, Boston VA Healthcare System-Brockton Division, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Brockton, MA, USA.
6Surgical Planning Laboratory, Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
Publisher:
 Springer
Publication Date:
 Sep-2012
Journal:
 Brain Imaging Behav
Volume Number:
 6
Issue Number:
 3
Pages:
 417-25
Citation:
 Brain Imaging Behav. 2012 Sep;6(3):417-25.
PubMed ID:
 22415192
Keywords:
 Schizophrenia, Disconnection, MRI, Cognitive neuropsychology
Appears in Collections:
PNL, LMI, NA-MIC, NAC, NCIGT, SLICER, SPL
Sponsors:
 NIH K05 MH070047
NIH R01 MH50740
NIH R01 MH40799
NIH R01 MH074794
NIH P41 RR13218
NIH P41 EB015902
NIH P50 MH080272
NIH U54 EB005149
Department of Veterans Affairs Merit Awards
VA Schizophrenia Center Grant
Generated Citation:
 Rosenberger G., Nestor P.G., Oh J.S., Levitt J.J., Kindleman G., Bouix S., Fitzsimmons J., Niznikiewicz M., Westin C-F., Kikinis R., McCarley R.W., Shenton M.E., Kubicki M. Anterior Limb of the Internal Capsule in Schizophrenia: a Diffusion Tensor Tractography Study. Brain Imaging Behav. 2012 Sep;6(3):417-25. PMID: 22415192.
Export citation:

Thalamo-cortical feedback loops play a key role in the processing and coordination of processing and integration of perceptual inputs and outputs, and disruption in this connection has long been hypothesized to contribute significantly to neuropsychological disturbances in schizophrenia. To test this hypothesis, we applied diffusion tensor tractography to 18 patients suffering schizophrenia and 20 control subjects. Fractional anisotropy (FA) was evaluated in the bilateral anterior and posterior limbs of the internal capsule, and correlated with clinical and neurocognitive measures. Patients diagnosed with schizophrenia showed significantly reduced FA bilaterally in the anterior but not the posterior limb of the internal capsule, compared with healthy control subjects. Lower FA correlated with lower scores on tests of declarative episodic memory in the patient group only. These findings suggest that disruptions, bilaterally, in thalamo-cortical connections in schizophrenia may contribute to disease-related impairment in the coordination of mnemonic processes of encoding and retrieval that are vital for efficient learning of new information.

Additional Material
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Rosenberger-BrainImagingBehav2012-fig2.jpg (52.139kB)