Sameh Mohamed Yousri Bondok
Ain Shams University, Egypt
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Develop Drugs
The last 20 years have brought about a virtual explosion of studies on brain connectivity in schizophrenia. These studies have shown that white matter organization is disrupted in schizophrenia, and that these disruptions have important implications for psychiatric symptomatology and sensory and cognitive deficits seen in the disorder. In recent decades, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), a magnetic resonance imaging technique sensitive to the orientation of water diffusion restricted within the neuron sheath and myelination, has been widely used in psychiatric research. One of the commonly used DTI measures is fractional anisotropy (FA), which is thought to reflect the anatomical features of neural fibers, such as the axon caliber, fiber density and myelination. Severity of symptoms and performance of cognitive functions (attention, executive function, memory) were examined and their relationships with fractional anisotropy at the regions of interest were examined by using voxelwise correlation analyses. In each case, better performance on these tasks was associated with higher levels of fractional anisotropy in task-relevant regions. Patients have significant dysfunction in the white matter integrity in all regions of interest (anterior cingulate cortex, uncinate fasciculus, superior longitudinal fasciculus and insula) bilaterally compared to healthy control. There is a significant correlation between dysfunction in the white matter integrity in right anterior cingulate cortex and sustained attention and executive functions. There is also a significant correlation between dysfunction in the white matter integrity in the uncinate fasciculus bilaterally and memory functions.
Email: drsamehbondok@yahoo.com
