Am J Psychiatry 1988; 145:820-824
Copyright © 1988 by American Psychiatric Association
Ventricular and sulcal size at the onset of psychosis
WG Iacono, GN Smith, M Moreau, M Beiser, JA Fleming, TY Lin and B Flak
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
To determine whether abnormalities in brain morphology are present at the
onset of illness, patients with schizophrenia, schizophreniform and bipolar
disorders, and major depression who were experiencing their first episodes
of psychosis were compared with normal and medical control subjects. The
schizophrenic patients had larger third ventricles but not larger lateral
ventricles or cortical sulci than the normal subjects. The other psychotic
patients did not differ from the normal group on these measures. A
different pattern of results emerged when the medical patients were used
for comparison, indicating that the choice of control group can influence
the findings of computerized tomography studies.
