ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Schizophrenia
Cortical Microstructural Changes in Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders using Quantitative T1 (qT1) Mapping
Provisionally accepted
- University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
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Cortical brain changes have long been established in schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD), with particular involvement of frontal and temporal areas. However, most studies to date focused on macroscopic analysis, such as cortical volume, thickness, and surface area. Quantitative T1 imaging (qT1) provides a measure of microstructural tissue properties, corresponding mainly to myelination. 14 SSD patients and 7 healthy controls were recruited and underwent qT1 imaging using two different acquisition sequences, single and multi-echo qT1 imaging. Compared to controls, SSD patients had a pronounced increase in qT1 values in frontal and temporal areas, while accounting for age and sex. However, this was only detected by the single echo qT1. Additionally, single echo qT1 was negatively modulated by sex in the SSD group, with females having lower qT1 values compared to their male counterparts. These results suggest impaired myelination in the frontal and temporal cortices in SSD. Lastly, we highlight the importance of protocol selection as inter-protocol reliability is still a concern despite the objective of quantitative protocols being to overcome this limitation.
Keywords: Schizophrenia, Neuropsychiatry, Neuroimaging, Multimodal Imaging, MRI, quantitative T1 mapping
Received: 19 Jun 2025; Accepted: 30 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 De Luca. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Vincenzo De Luca, vincenzo.deluca@camh.ca
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