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These findings have direct clinical relevance, says Gogtay. For example, autism, an early onset disorder, may occur because of faulty development early on. Childhood onset schizophrenia, with a somewhat later onset than autism, shows a back to front wave of gray matter loss, whereas later onset (the more typical form) schizophrenia seems to be more strongly associated with later maturing temporal and frontal regions. Thus the gray matter loss seen in schizophrenia could, at least in part, be an exaggeration of the normal "back to front" maturation process, and thus may also suggest excessive elimination of synapses (pruning) as a possible trigger of the disease.

Most prior studies of brain development were based on information from single (one time) MRI scans of subjects selected over a wide age range. The only study with repeatedly scanned children was done at the NIMH, but also included children with single scans. This study, an extension of a prior NIMH sample, permits more precise understanding of brain development in relation to its functional maturation, and provides the first video maps of brain development.

For this study, 13 healthy children were selected from the NIMH sample, who had 3-5 sequential MRI scans; each repeated at two-year intervals (a total of 52 MRI scans) and processed using the novel brain mapping technique. This technique, which the scientists developed at the UCLA School of Medicine, uses landmarks on the brain surface and then mathematically matches several brains. This creates a map of gray matter volume, at individual MRI point (voxel) over the entire brain surface. Using repeated scans it is then possible to map the changes in gray matter volume at each of these single MRI points (total
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Contact: Dawn McCoy
dawn@sfn.org
202-462-6688
Society for Neuroscience
8-Nov-2003