Relation of cortical thickness and surface area with general cognitive abilities in psychosis-risk Pubblico

Abstract

Individuals with schizophrenia largely demonstrate moderate to severe deficits in cognition. Still, there exists incredible heterogeneity in cognitive abilities, as one-fifth are comparable to controls. Recent research has begun to explain differences in general cognition among schizophrenia through variation in gray matter volume. However, volume is the product of both cortical thickness (CT) and surface area (SA), two indices that differ in developmental timing, genetic influences, and underlying cytoarchitecture. Thus, involving cortical volume may obscure finer associations between structure and cognition. As cognitive deficits present early before the onset of psychosis, this question should be examined among youth at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR-P) who are thought to be in the prodromal phase of illness and are less impacted by additional confounds (e.g. anti-psychotic use). In the present study, 645 participants (449 at CHR-P, 205 healthy controls) from the North American Prodromal Longitudinal Study (NAPLS2) completed an extensive cognitive battery and had undergone structural MRI scans at their initial assessment. Both CT and SA were extracted from 34 regions bilaterally (68 in total), and subcortical volume in eight regions (16 in total) were also derived. Multivariate linear regression was used to determine the association between regional cortical morphometry and general cognitive performance, adjusting for age, age-squared, sex, and the interaction between diagnostic group and morphometry. Results demonstrate that greater widespread SA and subcortical volumes predicted better general cognitive performance and that this pattern was largely shared across groups. In contrast, greater thickness among frontal and occipital regions predicted better cognitive performance in CHR-P, whereas no association was found among controls except for the lateral orbitofrontal cortex where increased thinning related to better performance. Overall, these results underline the importance of more minute measures of the cortex to examine cognition and how variation in performance may be shared across groups as well as group-specific. Results suggest that abnormal neurodevelopmental processes underlying CT in CHR-P may uniquely contribute to poorer cognitive performance. Future studies may investigate how increased cortical thinning associated with conversion to psychosis among CHR-P may relate to cognitive impairments.

Table of Contents

I. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

II. Method. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Materials and Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

III. Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Cortical Thickness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Cortical Surface Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Subcortical Volume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

IV. Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Table 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Table 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Table 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Table 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Table 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Figure 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Figure 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

About this Master's Thesis

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Psychology
Subfield / Discipline	Clinical Psychology
Degree	M.A.
Submission	Master's Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Psychology, Clinical
Parola chiave	cognition schizophrenia cortical thickness clinical high risk for psychosis
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Elaine F Walker, Emory University
Committee Members	Rohan HC Palmer, Emory University Patricia Bauer, Emory University

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