Hsiao Piau Ng1,2, Marek Kubicki1,3,
James Malcolm1, Yogesh Rathi1,3, Paula Pelavin1,
Robert W. McCarley3, Martha E. Shenton1,3
1Psychiatry Neuroimaging Lab, Brigham
and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; 2Singapore
Bioimaging Consortium, Agency for Science, Technology and Research,
Singapore, -, Singapore; 3Clinical Neuroscience Division, VA
Boston Healthcare System, Harvard Medical School, Brockton, MA, United States
The
connection between bilateral Heschls gyrus (HG) in normal controls (NC) and
schizophrenics (SZ) is investigated using DTI here. Whole-brain tractography
was first generated using filtered two-tensor tractography method, instead of
conventional streamline tractography. The relevant connection was then extracted
using the white matter of bilateral HGs as the ROIs. Measures for quantifying
the connection are mean FA, mode, trace, parallel and perpendicular
diffusivity. Statistically significant between-group differences in trace,
parallel and perpendicular diffusivity were observed. Our findings are
consistent with theories which suggest that SZ group has decreased WM
pathology, particularly in regions associated with auditory and language
processing.