Surface Anatomical Profile of the Cerebral Cortex in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: A Study of Cortical Thickness, Folding and Surface Area (original) (raw)
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Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience
Studying the brain anatomic structure offers a promising approach to improve our understanding of neural functional alter ations often encountered in individuals with psychiatric disorders. In those with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a psychiatric disorder with a 2%-3% lifetime prevalence 1 that causes strong impairment of daily life, findings up to now show disruptions on a functional and a structural neural level, mainly in a network including cortico-striatothalamo-cortical (CSTC) areas. Overall, these findings are rather inconsistent and limited by confounding factors, such as differences in clinical characteristics of the study sample or varying methodological approaches.
Reduced cortical thickness in non-medicated patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder
Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, 2012
Increasing evidence suggests the presence of grey matter volume abnormalities in patients with obsessivecompulsive disorder (OCD) and the mediation of the expression of different OCD symptoms by discrete neural systems of the brain. However, limited studies have investigated the abnormalities of cortical thickness, and their results are comparatively inconsistent, possibly owing to the inclusion of medicated patients. Therefore, this study investigated cortical thickness abnormalities using surface-based analysis to identify distinct neural correlates of each symptom dimension in non-medicated patients with OCD. Thirty nonmedicated patients with OCD and 30 age-and gender-matched healthy controls underwent magnetic resonance imaging. Group comparison of cortical thickness was performed using surface-based analysis. We also conducted correlation analysis between cortical thickness and each symptom dimension score. Compared to the healthy controls, the OCD patients had statistically significant reduction in cortical thickness in the cluster that contained the left superior temporal gyrus and posterior insular cortex (p b .05, corrected); no areas of the brain had significantly greater cortical thickness. Negative correlation was also found between cortical thickness and "cleaning" dimension scores in the left postcentral and right superior parietal gyri. The present results suggest that cortical thinning in the region that contains the left superior temporal gyrus and posterior insula may underlie pathophysiology of OCD and that discrete neural systems may mediate the "cleaning" symptom dimension.
The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science, 2016
There is accumulating evidence for the role of fronto-striatal and associated circuits in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) but limited and conflicting data on alterations in cortical thickness. To investigate alterations in cortical thickness and subcortical volume in OCD. In total, 412 patients with OCD and 368 healthy adults underwent magnetic resonance imaging scans. Between-group analysis of covariance of cortical thickness and subcortical volumes was performed and regression analyses undertaken. Significantly decreased cortical thickness was found in the OCD group compared with controls in the superior and inferior frontal, precentral, posterior cingulate, middle temporal, inferior parietal and precuneus gyri. There was also a group × age interaction in the parietal cortex, with increased thinning with age in the OCD group relative to controls. Our findings are partially consistent with earlier work, suggesting that group differences in grey matter volume and cortical thickn...
Greater regional cortical gray matter thickness in obsessive-compulsive disorder
NeuroReport, 2008
Earlier studies are inconsistent regarding the structural basis of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and few studies have investigated whether patients with OCD have cortical thickness abnormalities compared with healthy volunteers. Using magnetic resonance imaging we compared regional differences in cortical thickness among 21 patients with OCD and 21 demographically matched healthy volunteers. Our findings indicate that the right inferior frontal cortex and posterior middle temporal gyrus are thicker in patients with OCD compared with healthy controls, which may contribute to response inhibition deficits and other aspects of phenomenology related to the disorder.
The American journal of psychiatry, 2017
Brain imaging studies of structural abnormalities in OCD have yielded inconsistent results, partly because of limited statistical power, clinical heterogeneity, and methodological differences. The authors conducted meta- and mega-analyses comprising the largest study of cortical morphometry in OCD ever undertaken. T1-weighted MRI scans of 1,905 OCD patients and 1,760 healthy controls from 27 sites worldwide were processed locally using FreeSurfer to assess cortical thickness and surface area. Effect sizes for differences between patients and controls, and associations with clinical characteristics, were calculated using linear regression models controlling for age, sex, site, and intracranial volume. In adult OCD patients versus controls, we found a significantly lower surface area for the transverse temporal cortex and a thinner inferior parietal cortex. Medicated adult OCD patients also showed thinner cortices throughout the brain. In pediatric OCD patients compared with controls,...
Cortical thinning in obsessive compulsive disorder
Human Brain Mapping, 2007
Although studies of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) over the last 20 years have suggested abnormalities in frontal-subcortical circuitry, evidences of structural abnormalities in those areas are still imperfect and contradictory. With recent advances in neuroimaging technology, it is now possible to study cortical thickness based on cortical surfaces, which offers a direct quantitative index of cortical mass. Using the constrained Laplacian-based automated segmentation with proximities (CLASP) algorithm, we measured cortical thickness of 55 patients with OCD (33 men and 22 women) and 52 age- and sex-matched healthy volunteers (32 men and 20 women). We found multiple regions of cortical thinning in OCD patients compared to the normal control group. Patients with OCD had thinner left inferior frontal, left middle frontal, left precentral, left superior temporal, left parahippocampal, left orbitofrontal, and left lingual cortices. Most thinned regions were located in the left ventral cortex system, providing a new perspective that this ventral cortical system may be involved in the pathophysiology of OCD. Hum Brain Mapp, 2007. © 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
Brain and Behavior, 2014
Object: The aim of this study was to investigate macrostructural and microstructural brain changes in patients with pure obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and to examine the relationship between brain structure and neuropsychological deficits. Method: 20 patients with OCD underwent a comprehensive neuropsychological battery. A combined voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) analysis was used to capture gray matter (GM) and white matter changes in OCD patients as compared to pair-matched healthy volunteers. Multiple regression designs explored the relationship between cognition and neuroimaging parameters. Results: OCD patients had increased mean diffusivity (MD) in GM nodes of the orbitofronto-striatal loop (left dorsal anterior cingulate [Z = 3.67, P < 0.001] left insula [Z = 3.35 P < 0.001] left thalamus [Z = 3.59, P < 0.001] left parahippocampal gyrus [Z = 3.77 P < 0.001]) and in lateral frontal and posterior associative cortices (right frontal operculum [Z = 3.42 P < 0.001], right temporal lobe [Z = 3.79 P < 0.001] left parietal lobe [Z = 3.91 P < 0.001]). Decreased fractional anisotropy (FA) was detected in intrahemispheric (left superior longitudinal fasciculus [Z = 4.07 P < 0.001]) and interhemispheric (body of corpus callosum [CC, Z = 4.42 P < 0.001]) bundles. Concurrently, the semantic fluency score, a measure of executive control processes, significantly predicted OCD diagnosis (Odds Ratio = 1.37; 95% Confidence Intervals = 1.09-1.73; P = 0.0058), while variation in performance was correlated with increased MD in left temporal (Z = 4.25 P < 0.001) and bilateral parietal regions (left Z = 3.94, right Z = 4.19 P < 0.001), and decreased FA in the right posterior corona radiata (Z = 4.07 P < 0.001) and the left corticospinal tract (Z = 3.95 P < 0.001). Conclusions: The reported deficit in executive processes and the underlying microstructural alterations may qualify as behavioral and biological markers of OCD.
PLOS One, 2011
Background: Recent studies have reported that the insular cortex is involved in the pathophysiology of obsessivecompulsive disorder (OCD). However, specific morphometric abnormalities of the insular subregions remain unclear. In this study, we examined insular cortical volume to determine whether the volume of the anterior and posterior insular cortices of unmedicated OCD patients differed according to different symptom dimensions.
Anterior insular volume is larger in patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder
Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, 2011
There has been increasing evidence indicating gray matter abnormalities in patients with obsessivecompulsive disorder (OCD). Several voxel-based morphometry (VBM) studies have reported volume changes in the insular cortex. Although there are distinct differences in the connectivity and functions in the anterior and posterior insular cortices, these two regions have never been distinguished in previous VBM studies. In this study, we adopted a region of interest (ROI) method to measure insular volume separately. We investigated insular volume in 32 drug-free patients with OCD and in 34 healthy controls using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Repeated measures multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was conducted to examine the difference between the patients and the controls. Compared with the healthy controls, the patients had a significantly larger gray matter volume in the anterior insular cortex bilaterally (post hoc test, p = 0.036; left, p = 0.047; right). This is the first volumetric MRI study to separately investigate the anterior and posterior insular cortex volumes in non-medicated patients with OCD. The results suggest that the anterior insular cortex may be related to the pathophysiology of OCD.