Reduced mammillary body volume in individuals with a schizophrenia diagnosis: an analysis of the COBRE data set

Milczarek, Michal M., Gilani, Syed A., Lequin, Maarten H. and Vann, Seralynne D. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6709-8773 2023. Reduced mammillary body volume in individuals with a schizophrenia diagnosis: an analysis of the COBRE data set. npj Schizophrenia 9 , 48. 10.1038/s41537-023-00376-7

Preview

PDF - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

While the frontal cortices and medial temporal lobe are well associated with schizophrenia, the involvement of wider limbic areas is less clear. The mammillary bodies are important for both complex memory formation and anxiety and are implicated in several neurological disorders that present with memory impairments. However, little is known about their role in schizophrenia. Post-mortem studies have reported a loss of neurons in the mammillary bodies but there are also reports of increased mammillary body volume. The findings from in vivo MRI studies have also been mixed, but studies have typically only involved small sample sizes. To address this, we acquired mammillary body volumes from the open-source COBRE dataset, where we were able to manually measure the mammillary bodies in 72 individuals with a schizophrenia diagnosis and 74 controls. Participant age ranged from 18 to 65. We found the mammillary bodies to be smaller in the patient group, across both hemispheres, after accounting for the effects of total brain volume and gender. Hippocampal volumes, but not subiculum or total grey matter volumes, were also significantly lower in patients. Given the importance of the mammillary bodies for both memory and anxiety, this atrophy could contribute to the symptomology in schizophrenia.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Psychology Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC)
Publisher:	Nature Publishing Group
ISSN:	2334-265X
Funders:	Wellcome Trust
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	24 July 2023
Date of Acceptance:	12 July 2023
Last Modified:	06 Jan 2024 02:08
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/161210

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item