Thread by @PTenigma

Marek Kubicki’s plenary now starting at 6pm: diffusion imaging in schizophrenia shows brain microstructural abnormalities, but what is the underlying biology ? #ICP2022 a 🧵 if I can keep up with his talk ! :

Do Inflammation and myelin abnormalities play a role? There are many possible mechanisms …

Maturational trajectories could be shifted earlier, later, or slowed - as in this review by @PKochunov and Elliot Hong

@suheyla_cetin notes that many diffusion MRI studies are done worldwide but not with the same scanning protocols ! … #ICP2022

The scanner effects can be over 30 times larger than the effects of aging on the microstructure metrics ! #ICP2022 🧠 @suheyla_cetin notes there are methods to fix this …

@suheyla_cetin notes that @PKochunov and Elliot aging offer 3 hypotheses about what happens in schizophrenia: not attaining peak maturation, slowed development, and|or faster brain aging; these are not mutually exclusive

And, @ it looks like all 3 happen BUT…. @suheyla_cetin notes that:

There are 3 clusters of tracts doing distinct things, with different patterns !! #ICP2022

Amanda Lyall continues: large studies led by their group and by @enigmabrains Schizophrenia working group support these altered trajectories and differential patterns for different sectors or white matter @sineadykelly analyzed worldwide data to show consistent abnormalities

Those with shorter duration of illness showed the largest deviation from the healthy mean, in free water metrics developed by Ofer Pasternak; could it be atrophy ? Amanda Lyall explains that..

Rather than atrophy an inflammatory or immune activation could occur earlier in the illness but atrophy may contribute to abnormalities in those over age 45 (she showed inflammatory metics linked to free water metrics!)

Johanna Switzerland-Holland notes there are considerable sex differences in the same regions (as @KE__Lawrence and @Leila_Nabulsi also found - biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-… )…

And in females a higher IQ seems to be protective (as a cognitive reserve?) against the long term effects of schizophrenia in that the association with positive symptoms is greater in women with lower IQ (except from talk right now by Amanda Lyall at #ICP2022 )