White matter hemisphere asymmetries in healthy subjects and in schizophrenia: a diffusion tensor MRI study

By Hae-Jeong Park, Carl-Fredrik Westin, Marek Kubicki, S. Maier, M. Niznikiewicz, A. Baer, Melissa Frumin, Ron Kikinis, Ferenc A. Jolesz, Robert W. McCarley and 1 more. NeuroImage, 2004

316 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Hemisphere asymmetry was explored in normal healthy subjects and in patients with schizophrenia using a novel voxel-based tensor analysis applied to fractional anisotropy (FA) of the diffusion tensor. Our voxel-based approach, which requires precise spatial normalization to remove the misalignment of fiber tracts, includes generating a symmetrical group average template of the diffusion tensor by applying nonlinear elastic warping of the demons algorithm. We then normalized all 32 diffusion tensor MRIs from healthy subjects and 23 from schizophrenic subjects to the symmetrical average template. For each brain, six channels of tensor component images and one T2-weighted image were used for registration to match tensor orientation and shape between images. A statistical evaluation of white matter asymmetry was then conducted on the normalized FA images and their flipped images. In controls, we found left-higher-than-right anisotropic asymmetry in the anterior part of the corpus callosum, cingulum bundle, the optic radiation, and the superior cerebellar peduncle, and right-higher-than-left anisotropic asymmetry in the anterior limb of the internal capsule and the anterior limb's prefrontal regions, in the uncinate fasciculus, and in the superior longitudinal fasciculus. In patients, the asymmetry was lower, although still present, in the cingulum bundle and the anterior corpus callosum, and not found in the anterior limb of the internal capsule, the uncinate fasciculus, and the superior cerebellar peduncle compared to healthy subjects. These findings of anisotropic asymmetry pattern differences between healthy controls and patients with schizophrenia are likely related to neurodevelopmental abnormalities in schizophrenia.

Subfields: Pathology and Forensic Medicine, Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/067c5259cba1f5493d31cb812b13a34267f97037

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In Pathology and Forensic Medicine

In Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health

In Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

Citations in the corpus

Reproducibility of quantitative tractography methods applied to cerebral white matter (2007, methodology): “Park et al. performed voxel-based analysis and reported higher FA of the cingulum bundle in the left hemisphere, but otherwise for the uncinate fasciculus (Park et al., 2004).”
Diffusion tensor imaging of white matter tract evolution over the lifespan (2012, background): “Similarly, reports of hemispheric asymmetry of diffusion parameters are inconsistent (Ardekani et al., 2007; Buchel et al., 2004; Gong et al., 2005; Hasan et al., 2010; Park et al., 2004; Rodrigo et al., 2007; Wilde et al., 2009; Yasmin et al., 2009).”
Regional DTI differences in multiple sclerosis patients (2009, unknown): “VBMbased analysis has also been applied on FA data (Park et al., 2004; Sach et al., 2004), albeit not in MS.”
Dissecting the uncinate fasciculus: disorders, controversies and a hypothesis. (2013, methodology): “parts of the uncinate fasciculus but not others (Park et al., 2004; Rodrigo et al., 2007).”
Atlasing location, asymmetry and inter-subject variability of white matter tracts in the human brain with MR diffusion tractography (2011, unknown): “, 2005) and voxel based statistics (Park et al., 2004).”
DTI and MTR abnormalities in schizophrenia: Analysis of white matter integrity (2005, methodology): “This warping technique has been successfully used in diffusion studies (Guimond et al., 2001; Park et al., 2003, 2004).”