Am J Psychiatry 1989; 146:1001-1005
Copyright © 1989 by American Psychiatric Association
Nuclear magnetic resonance study of obsessive-compulsive disorder
HJ Garber, JV Ananth, LC Chiu, VJ Griswold and WH Oldendorf
UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brains of 32 patients who met the
DSM-III criteria for obsessive-compulsive disorder and of 14 normal
subjects frequently revealed abnormalities, but none was specific to
obsessive-compulsive disorder. Spin-lattice relaxation time (T1) for right
frontal white matter was prolonged in the patients compared to the control
subjects, and the patients had greater right-minus-left T1 differences for
frontal white matter. Right-minus-left T1 differences in the orbital
frontal cortex were strongly correlated with symptom severity in the
unmedicated patients and in the patients with family histories of
obsessive-compulsive disorder.
