Planum temporale in schizophrenia: a magnetic resonance study

doi:10.1016/0920-9964(92)90069-H

Schizophrenia Research

Volume 7, Issue 1, April 1992, Pages 19-22

https://doi.org/10.1016/0920-9964(92)90069-H Get rights and content

Abstract

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans were used to examine the size and asymmetry of the planum temporale (PT) in 20 schizophrenic patients and 12 strictly matched healthy volunteers. PT lengths from coronal sections were measured and then summed to obtain an estimate of their areas. Schizophrenics showed the lack of the physiological PT area asymmetry evidenced in the control sample and a statistically significant diagnosis by side interaction was observed (F = 4.96; p < 0.05). The study of PT asymmetry could permit us to better analyse the role of laterality in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia.

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Functional hemispheric lateralization for language in patients with schizophrenia
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Citation Excerpt :
Other authors have associated decreased asymmetry in the frontal brain regions with early disease onset (Highley et al., 1998; Maher et al., 1998). Patients with schizophrenia have also been noted to exhibit decreased leftward anatomical asymmetry of the superior temporal gyrus (Delisi et al., 1994; Levitan et al., 1999) or the planum temporale (Sommer et al., 2001a; Kawasaki et al., 2008; Clark et al., 2010), with some schizophrenia patients even showing rightward asymmetry of the planum temporale (Rossi et al., 1992; Pearlson et al., 1996; Barta et al., 1997; Hasan et al., 2011). Structural brain scans can be used to predict language lateralization in healthy subjects (Josse et al., 2009), but functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) remains the most powerful imaging method for evaluating hemispheric dominance for language.
It is widely reported that patients with schizophrenia exhibit decreased hemispheric lateralization. However, no study has evaluated relationships between the hemispheric anatomical and functional asymmetry in language areas. The present study aimed to determine whether decreased leftward hemispheric lateralization could be related to asymmetry of the grey matter volume in patients with schizophrenia. This investigation was the first to use a functional index of laterality to analyze the global functional network specifically involved in the language task.
Twenty-seven right-handed patients with schizophrenia and 54 right-handed control subjects underwent a session of a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a speech listening paradigm. Functional laterality indices (FLI) were calculated (Wilke, M. and Lidzba, K., 2007. LI-tool: a new toolbox to assess lateralization in functional MR-data. J Neurosci Methods. 163, 128–136). The indices of asymmetry in the volume of grey matter (GVAIs) were computed from the functional language network.
Patients with schizophrenia exhibited significantly decreased leftward hemispheric lateralization. There was a positive correlation between GVAIs and FLIs in healthy subjects, while no such correlation was seen in patients with schizophrenia.
This study reports for the first time a significant relationship between the anatomical and functional asymmetry in healthy subjects, but not in patients with schizophrenia. While decreased leftward functional lateralization for language was observed in patients with schizophrenia compared to the control group, this functional abnormality was not related to asymmetry in the volume of grey matter.
Planum temporale asymmetry to the right hemisphere in first-episode schizophrenia
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Citation Excerpt :
Reviewing the literature, schizophrenia patients and healthy controls present predominantly higher PT volumes on the left hemisphere and an asymmetry of PT volumes to the right hemisphere is not found until now. Former MRI studies demonstrated such a reversed asymmetry to the right measuring the PT surface area (Rossi et al., 1992; Petty et al., 1995), but it is a key methodical difference, especially regarding asymmetry, whether cortical surface or volumes were measured (Oertel et al., 2010). Another finding of our study is the significant asymmetry difference between schizophrenia patients and healthy controls, whereas our effect was mainly driven by a lack of asymmetry in healthy controls.
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2010, Journal of Neuroscience Methods
Citation Excerpt :
HG is extended more anterior in the right than in the left hemisphere, this asymmetry varying (between individuals) with handedness, gender, or age. Moreover, reduced asymmetry has been reported in schizophrenia patients (Rossi et al., 1992, 1994; Petty et al., 1995; Barta et al., 1997; Hirayasu et al., 2000; Kasai et al., 2003). The proposed coordinate transformation serves to account for this interindividual variance.
Allocating electromagnetic auditory responses to active regions in the human auditory cortex can be difficult because of high interindividual variability of the relevant structures. Location and orientation of the primary auditory cortex (Heschl's Gyrus) and the temporal plane vary with individual features such as age, gender, handedness, or between healthy subjects and patients with a psychiatric disorder (e.g., schizophrenia). Here, we propose a reference coordinate system that considers the individual MRI-based position, orientation and length of the primary auditory cortex to account for interindividual variability. Transformation of the M50 dipole localizations in this new HG-(Heschl's-Gyrus)-coordinate system, accomplished for 10 healthy subjects and 10 schizophrenia patients, confirmed group difference more precisely than other registration methods. We suggest to use the HG-coordinate system for localization of functional measures and evaluation of brain activity differences between groups or measurement conditions.
Two-dimensional assessment of cytoarchitecture in the superior temporal white matter in schizophrenia, major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder
2009, Schizophrenia Research
Evidence from brain imaging studies indicates that white matter volume, density and fractional anisotropy may be altered in individuals with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. However, the molecular correlates of these deficits remain unknown. In this study we performed a cytoarchitectural assessment of the white matter adjacent to the planum temporale (PT), an auditory association region located within the superior temporal gyrus, in subjects with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and controls (15 subjects per group). Using two-dimensional measures, we recorded the cell density, distribution and size of all neurons and glial nuclei within this region. Glial density was lower in the schizophrenia group, relative to the control group. Neuronal density, neuronal size, and glial nuclear size did not differ between groups. No significant differences in neuronal clustering were observed in the patient groups. Further studies are required to examine whether the observed decrease in glial density within the superior temporal white matter in schizophrenia reflects a deficit in any individual glial cell population.
Stimulus- and response-locked neuronal generator patterns of auditory and visual word recognition memory in schizophrenia
2009, International Journal of Psychophysiology
Examining visual word recognition memory (WRM) with nose-referenced EEGs, we reported a preserved ERP ‘old-new effect’ (enhanced parietal positivity 300–800 ms to correctly-recognized repeated items) in schizophrenia ([Kayser, J., Bruder, G.E., Friedman, D., Tenke, C.E., Amador, X.F., Clark, S.C., Malaspina, D., Gorman, J.M., 1999. Brain event-related potentials (ERPs) in schizophrenia during a word recognition memory task. Int. J. Psychophysiol. 34(3), 249–265.]). However, patients showed reduced early negative potentials (N1, N2) and poorer WRM. Because group differences in neuronal generator patterns (i.e., sink-source orientation) may be masked by choice of EEG recording reference, the current study combined surface Laplacians and principal components analysis (PCA) to clarify ERP component topography and polarity and to disentangle stimulus- and response-related contributions. To investigate the impact of stimulus modality, 31-channel ERPs were recorded from 20 schizophrenic patients (15 male) and 20 age-, gender-, and handedness-matched healthy adults during parallel visual and auditory continuous WRM tasks. Stimulus- and response-locked reference-free current source densities (spherical splines) were submitted to unrestricted Varimax-PCA to identify and measure neuronal generator patterns underlying ERPs. Poorer (78.2 ± 18.7% vs. 87.8 ± 11.3% correct) and slower (958 ± 226 vs. 773 ± 206 ms) performance in patients was accompanied by reduced stimulus-related left-parietal P3 sources (150 ms pre-response) and vertex N2 sinks (both overall and old/new effects) but modality-specific N1 sinks were not significantly reduced. A distinct mid-frontal sink 50-ms post-response was markedly attenuated in patients. Reductions were more robust for auditory stimuli. However, patients showed increased lateral-frontotemporal sinks (T7 maximum) concurrent with auditory P3 sources. Electrophysiologic correlates of WRM deficits in schizophrenia suggest functional impairments of posterior cortex (stimulus representation) and anterior cingulate (stimulus categorization, response monitoring), primarily affecting memory for spoken words.
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2009, Schizophrenia Research
Given the wealth of data in the literature on schizophrenia endophenotypes, it is useful to have one source to reference their frequency data. We reviewed the literature on disease-liability associated variants in structural and functional magnetic resonance images (MRI), sensory processing measures, neuromotor abilities, neuropsychological measures, and physical characteristics in schizophrenia patients (SCZ), their first-degree relatives (REL), and healthy controls (HC). The purpose of this review was to provide a summary of the existing data on the most extensively published endophenotypes for schizophrenia.
We searched PubMed and MedLine for all studies on schizophrenia endophenotypes comparing SCZ to HC and/or REL to HC groups. Percent abnormal values, generally defined as > 2 SD from the mean (in the direction of abnormality) and/or associated effect sizes (Cohen's d) were calculated for each study.
Combined, the articles reported an average 39.4% (SD = 20.7%; range = 2.2–100%) of abnormal values in SCZ, 28.1% (SD = 16.6%; range = 1.6–67.0%) abnormal values in REL, and 10.2% (SD = 6.7%; range = 0.0–34.6%) in HC groups.
These findings are reviewed in the context of emerging hypotheses on schizophrenia endophenotypes, as well as a discussion of clustering trends among the various intermediate phenotypes. In addition, programs for future research are discussed, as instantiated in a few recent large-scale studies on multiple endophenotypes across patients, relatives, and healthy controls.

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View full text

Planum temporale in schizophrenia: a magnetic resonance study

Abstract

Psychiatry Res. Neuroimaging

Brain Language

Neuropsychologia

Biol. Psychiatry

Auditory hallucinations and smaller superior temporal gyral volume in schizophrenia

Am. J. Psychiatry

Schizophrenia as an anomaly of development of cerebral asymmetry: a post-mortem study and a proposal concerning the genetic basis of the disease

Arch. Gen. Psychiatry

Crow's ‘lateralization hypothesis’ for schizophrenia

Arch. Gen. Psychiatry

Left-right asymmetry in temporal speech region

Science