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New software that can accurately map increases and decreases in brain volume has found an association between a reduction in grey matter in the brain and early onset psychosis.
The especially created software ENIGMA-VBM was developed at King’s College London and its effectiveness means researchers are now investigating the brains of those with several other disorders from across the world.
The study, published in Molecular Psychiatry, is the largest ever brain imaging study in early onset psychosis and has provided unprecedented levels of detail about the illness. It shows that, in contrast to other mental health disorders, people with early onset psychosis have a reduced volume of grey matter across nearly all regions of their brain. Researchers hope that this detailed mapping could be used to assist in future diagnosis, as well as to track the effects of treatment in patients with early onset psychosis.
Early onset psychosis occurs before the age of 18 during a critical period of development in the brain. Individuals diagnosed with the illness are likely to experience severe and long-lasting symptoms that respond less well to treatment. Despite this, research has been limited in sample size and statistical power.
Further analysis of the data revealed that those individuals who developed early onset psychosis at a later age had lower volumes of grey matter in a number of small brain regions compared to those with an earlier age of onset.
Study could lead to better diagnosis of early onset psychosis
The study represents an international effort, combining brain scans from Norway, Spain, Canada, Italy, Australia & UK, 482 individuals with early onset psychosis being compared to 469 healthy controls. An analysis of the data revealed that individuals with early onset psychosis had lower volumes of grey matter in almost all regions of the brain compared to the healthy controls, with a marked effect in the left median cingulate – an area of the brain associated with the formation and processing of emotions, learning and memory.
Dr Matthew Kempton, Reader in Neuroimaging Psychiatry at King’s IoPPN and the study’s senior author said: “Early onset psychosis can have a devastating impact on a person’s life and wellbeing, but our understanding of the illness is still sadly relatively limited. This study, the largest neuroimaging analysis of early onset psychosis to date, used newly developed technologies to combine scans from different sites to examine hundreds of thousands of data points measuring volume in the brain.
“We found that people with early onset psychosis experience a lower volume of grey matter in nearly all regions of their brains compared to people without the illness. This detailed map will hopefully provide the basis for future research, as it could help as a diagnostic tool, and even track the effectiveness of treatments.”
Grey matter’s primary purpose is to process information in the brain and plays a significant role in day to day functions like memory, emotions and movement.
This study represents independent research, partly funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London.