Stand der Ursachen - Mitteldeutsche Psychiatrietage 2011

Poster | Affektive Störungen
P21
Major depressive disorder and cortical thickness abnormalities in default mode
network: a structural mri study with surfstat
L. Meng, N. Hailla, D. Horn, C. Metzger, A. Osoba, J. Kaufmann, J. Steiner, K. Schiltz, B. Bogerts, H.
He, M. Walter, Magdeburg
Background: Recently, several studies suggested that dysfunctional connectivity rooted from regions of the
default mode network (DMN) could be a core feature of depressive symptomatology [1]. However, cortical
structural origins of abnormal connectivity have not been widely studied. The aim of the present study was
to investigate the abnormalities of cortical thickness in areas involved in the DMN in major depressive
disorder (MDD) patients.
Subjects and Methods: Twenty MDD and 20 age-and-gender matched controls were scanned.
High resolution T1-weighted MRI scans of the brain were acquired on a 3 Tesla Siemens MAGNETOM Trio
scanner using a 3D-MPRAGE sequence (TE = 4.77 ms, TR = 2500 ms, T1 = 1100 ms, flip angle = 7°,
bandwidth = 140 Hz/pixel, acquisition matrix = 256 × 256 × 192, isometric voxel size = 1.0 mm3).
Cortical thickness was automatically calculated using the Constrained Laplacian- based Automated
Segmentation with Proximities (CLASP) algorithm [2-3]. All the statistical analysis was performed by the
SurfStat toolbox, using linear mixed effects models and random field theory.
Results: Compared with controls, MDD patients showed significantly decreased cortical thickness,
corrected for multiple comparissons only in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), even if age and gender
were included as covariates into our model. On a uncorrected p-level of p